posting a thread and/or post using a PHP program & cron job

[RayJohns]

I'm using VB 3.7.x and I was wondering if anyone has a modification, hack or any information on how to insert data into VB using an external program (PHP). On our site, we have chat logs which are generated every evening. They are rotated and saved on the server in a flat (txt) format.

I would like to setup a cron job or external program which will run once a night and post the information in the log file into a thread in one of our forums. We currently are using some RSS feeds on the site and I have thought about setting up an RSS feed locally and then pointing the RSS feed facility in VB to that feed once a night. This might work okay, but in the event it doesn't, I was wondering if there is any simple way to automate the posting of a thread or post into a forum using a PHP program.

I've looked through the rssposter.php program in ./includes/cron but it appears that a lot of the code involves parsing the RSS feed, etc. Does anyone have a very straight forward method for posting into VB? I assume I can't just insert the data directly into the MySQL table, since this might mess up some of the other information (such as last posts, etc.). I have written code that pulls data out of the tables no problem, but I'm hesitant to write any code that just injects data into the tables (since I don't know what other tables need to also be updated).

Anyway, if anyone has any pointers or if there are any existing mods that will do what I want, I would love to hear from you. Thanks!

Ray

--------------- Added [DATE]1236349628[/DATE] at [TIME]1236349628[/TIME] ---------------

good news... I was able to setup just what we needed using the built in RSS feed manager system in VB. I just ended up writing our own RSS feed and then embedded the information in the RSS tags. With a little parsing of the information, it's now posting into the forums every night automatically. Works like a charm!

:-)

Ray