RSS News Feed Hack

My friend made this hack, he owns http://www.liquidpro.net. Check him out.
You may contact him at liquidpro@neo.rr.com. Or you can IM him on AIM at LiquidPro10.

An example is shown at http://www.xtreme-forumz.net. Go to the Techno forum under the General category. Then the CNET News sub-forum.

RSS News Feed Hack for vB 3.0.0. As long as vBulletin doesn't change the database structure much, this should be good for the next release also, and those to come.

Allows you to have a live RSS news feed (such as one from Google or CNET) in a forum. The user that posts it will basically be a bot, which *should* only be used for posting the news, but you can even make it for a regular user.

Comments are welcome!

Instructons:
Note: DON'T FORGET TO MAKE A BACKUP OF EACH FILE BEFORE YOU MODIFY IT!

Copy the files to your web server... keep the same directory structure as in the zip file.
Run the rss_install.php file to setup the RSS script.
If you're upgrading run the rss_upgrade.php file to setup the RSS script. Don't forget to remove all previous modifications (you can find them by searching for "LiquidPro")

#### open the /index.php script ####
Find this:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/functions_forumlist.php'); 


Add below it:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/RSS/rss_update.php'); 


#### open the /forumdisplay.php script ####
Find this:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/functions_forumdisplay.php'); 


Add below it:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/RSS/rss_update.php'); 


#### open the /admincp/index.php script ####

Find this:

PHP Code:

construct_nav_group("$vbphrase[styles] &amp; $vbphrase[templates]", '<hr />'); 


Add below it:

PHP Code:

// Manage Hacks
// by: Andrew Wickham
// LiquidPro Inc.
//
construct_nav_option('RSS News Feed', 'rss_admin.php', '<br />');
construct_nav_group('Hacks');
//
// End Manage Hacks 


You're done, thanks for installing the hack.

Hack by: Andrew Wickham (http://www.liquidpro.net)
Hack for: Xtreme-Forumz (http://www.xtreme-forumz.net)

[Milez]

Installed ... everything went well, however, once I set up a bot, and enabled it, it brought my server to it's knees! This is a dual cpu box with a gig of ram, used it all!

Anyone else having this problem? I dont want to install it if that is the case.

[Mr. Brian]

I thought I'm the only one encounterd such problem but littlt then I expect to see there's so many people having the same case.

[Milez]

I installed it just to see. It does gobble up memory and CPU. Way too much.

My problem though is all my feeds show up as a link that says 'view full article' which takes me to the sources webpage. Anyone know why?

[bradsears]

I'm also really excited to see this hack. Thanks very much for your work.

[Milez]

Anyone know how to uninstall this? IE: remove the database edits.

[Shock.r]

Originally Posted by wolfstream

  for($i = count($rss_allItems) - 1; $i >= 0; $i--) {
            $rss_allItems[$i][OLD] = false;
        }

That fixed the problem right up, indeed.

Now, there are a couple more things that are issues. For one there's no check for mysql_escape_string which will be bad if you actually grab rss feeds from, say a site that uses " or '. I've already run into this one tonight;
Fix:
In includes/RSS/rss_update.php, look for

$rss_title = str_replace("'", "\'", $rss_title);
$rss_description = str_replace("'", "\'", $rss_description);

and change it to:

         $rss_description=mysql_escape_string($rss_description);
         $rss_title=mysql_escape_string($rss_title);
//         $rss_title = str_replace("'", "\'", $rss_title);
//        $rss_description = str_replace("'", "\'", $rss_description);

Essentially, this is the same thing, but for some reason the replace ' doesn't work as it should, in the longrun. I noticed this when I got feedback from the next script which I'll post:

In response to the cron thing, it's really a simple thing to do (until this is officially added to the cron somehow). Create a file in your public_html, call it rssfeed.php (or whatever), and in it, just add:

<?
require_once('./global.php');
require_once('./includes/functions_bigthree.php');
require_once('./includes/functions_forumlist.php');
require_once('./includes/RSS/rss_update.php');
?>

and for a cron entry, just call

*/5 * * * * php /path/to/your/file/rssfeed.php

This will update the news feeds every 5 minutes, rather than every time someone visits the forum, which would be more efficient. 5 minutes may (still) be too much, but I doubt it.

BTW, i've integrated this into vbadvanced, for those wanting info on how, let me know and if there's enough interest I'll post it here.

As far as forums and counts, I agree this is something that shouldn't be updated. However, if you (really) want to update your forums and posts, having this count in them, you can update your postcounts from admincp. This will fix that problem. Hopefully, I'll be able to come up with a workaround for that in the near future, but who knows.

Great code, glad to see it finally working!!

cron job thing works perfect so far! ive got it updating every hour.

[dartmoore]

There is no rss_config.php in the zip..did i miss something?

[dartmoore]

Originally Posted by dartmoore

There is no rss_config.php in the zip..did i miss something?

Does anyone the rss_config.php for this hack..Not in the zip..This should be moved out of the full releases section.. :disappointed:

[sjau]

What rss_config.php ? There is none...

[dartmoore]

Originally Posted by sjau

What rss_config.php ? There is none...

From post#2,

Save your forumdisplay.php file

Open the rss_config.php file included with this zip, and edit the settings to your likings. Make sure you create the specified user or you'll have some major problems.

Copy the rss_config.php file to the "includes" directory on your server.

That's it for the hacking! For the thread you put this hack on, I suggest that you have it so that users other than the bot can't post new threads, only post replies. That way they can post comments on the news feed.

Hack by: Andrew Wickham (http://www.liquidpro.net)
Hack for: Xtreme-Forumz (http://www.xtreme-forumz.net)


this says there is.. and i get sql error cannot find rss_config.php..