I want to create a bot for posting on forums

Hi,

I would like to create a bot but since its my first time I dont know where to begin from. Like for example what language can I use. I have experience with PHP and some python but thats about it I need a bot that does the following: check every 1 minute or so whether there is a new comment from a given user and then immediately post a reply to it. I want to upload it to a webserver and have it work full time.

Could you please put me in the right direction so I have something to start with?

Thank you.

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I assume that the forum is your own.

Then you can use serverside to respond to that given user when a post is made. (But I wouldn’t call that a “bot”.)

I suggest you use PHP to accomplish this.

(Maybe you can ask to move the thread to the PHP forum?)

1 Like

Done!

I want to create a bot for posting on forums

How many forums you need to post on?

Maybe taking a look at HUBOT could help some?

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It doesnt have to be on PHP. I will take the option that better meets my needs. And no, the forum is not mine so it has to be something that works externally. Is PHP the best option then? Because please keep in mind that it the script, program, bot or whatever is called should work automatically without operator.

I only need to post on one forum. The bot should check every minute or so whether there is a new comment from a certain user and reply immediately. I guess that if this is done on PHP I would require to set a cronjob for my server to run the script automatically, right?

I guess the first step is to determine the API the other forum has for posting replies to a particular member.

Knowing that may influence the decision about what the best language to use might be.

Has the site given you an API key for you to experiment with during development yet?

No, but I wrote a script myself that does something similar. If you access it on your browser it tells you how many posts that user has. My idea is to have the bot access that and whenever the number there changes make it run.

May be it’s just me, but it sounds more like an order in the restaurant than a post on a discussion board.

You are right, its just YOU hahahaha

Seriously, nobody can help?

Still waiting for crucial information from you.

I already answered to that. I have no API but I wrote a script myself that tells you how many posts has the user. The URL is something like: mysite.com/userposts.php and all you see there is a number like: 143
or whatever posts the user has. By the way, the site is Yahoo. Is that enough information?

I’m afraid that without the other site having an API you’ve probably gone almost as far as you can with this for now.

It’s one thing the have a script fetch and parse a page DOM
It’s inefficient compared against using an API and could get you blocked if you abuse it but it is doable.

It’s an entirely different thing having a script make forum posts.

The site needs to provide you with an API “key” so code can authenticate your script as belonging to “you”.

And there needs to be an “end point” that you can send properly formatted data to for code to use to create a post.

I guess you could make things a bit easier for yourself by setting up the bot to run as a CRON once daily (more or less) and have it send you an email. Once you became aware of the new data you could then log in to the site with your browser and make your posts.

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So no API no bot? Then how come there are millions of bots out there spamming any sites regardless of having an API? Thats exactly what bots do, they login automatically and post spam just like that. Everything by themselves. How do those work then? I dont want anything that advanced (well, i do want it but Im trying to be realistic) but something very simple will do the job.

True, there are bot scripts out there used to SPAM.

But things have changed. xRumer is dead in the water and Akismet stops bot SPAM before it happens.

Most of what gets though is “human” SPAM and many sites do a good job of dealing with that now.

Like I posted previously, if you want to write a bot to make automated posts to your own site checking out HUBOT should get you started in the right direction.

If you want to write a bot to make automated posts to someone elses site contact them and ask them to let you know what you need to do to be able to do it.

3 Likes

I see but nevertheless I would like to know what kind of technology do those bots use even if they are blocked as you say. I am pretty sure my target is not that secure to stop them and besides, I dont intend to post spam, just automated replies with no links or whatsoever.

That’s still spam, even if there are no links.

" I am pretty sure my target is not that secure" is a slippery ground. If a door to my house “is not that secure” you aren’t allowed to break in anyway.

4 Likes

No spam because I would do it manually anyway, i just want to save some time and effort. I do this for the sake of knowing how. I want to be able to create bots and this is good to start with.

so did you look into HUBOT as was suggested earlier?

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