Here's a working prototype for searching a vBulletin forum by RSS. This plugs right into Fetch & Retrieve.
Just drop this file into your vBulletin root directory. Currently you must be using the FULLTEXT search method. This was written against VB 3.6.8, so if you're running a vastly different version you may need to tweak the query slightly.
Your Fetch & Retrieve URL would look like:
http://localhost/forums/searchrss.php?q=#find#
To restrict access to specific IPs (such as only your webserver for F&R requests), simply change:
if(1) {
To something like:
if($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == '1.2.3.4') {
searchrss.php:
<?php
// RSS Search Results by WebGroup Media LLC (http://www.webgroupmedia.com/)
// MIT License
define("WGMRSS_TITLE", "Cerberus Helpdesk 4.0 Forums");
define("WGMRSS_BASEURL","http://www.cerb4.com/forums/");
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);
require_once('./global.php');
require_once(DIR . '/includes/functions_search.php');
require_once(DIR . '/includes/functions_forumlist.php');
require_once(DIR . '/includes/functions_misc.php');
if (1) {
$res = $db->query_read(sprintf("select p.postid,t.title,p.dateline,p.username,pp.pagetext _html,match(p.title,pagetext) against ('%s') as score from post p inner join thread t ON (t.threadid=p.threadid) inner join postparsed pp ON (pp.postid=p.postid) where match(p.title,pagetext) against ('%s') group by p.threadid order by score desc limit 0,100",
$db->escape_string($_REQUEST['q']),
$db->escape_string($_REQUEST['q'])
));
header('Content-type: text/xml');
?>
<rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title><![CDATA[<?php echo WGMRSS_TITLE; ?>]]></title>
<link><?php echo WGMRSS_BASEURL; ?></link>
<description></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:56:50 +0000</pubDate>
<generator>SearchRSS Plugin by WebGroup Media LLC - http://www.webgroupmedia.com/</generator>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<?php
if($db->num_rows($res)) {
while($row = $db->fetch_array($res)) {
$pubDate = date('r', $row['dateline']);
$baseurl = WGMRSS_BASEURL;
$title = utf8_encode($row['title']);
$text = utf8_encode($row['pagetext_html']);
echo <<< HERE
<item>
<title><![CDATA[${title}]]></title>
<author>${row['username']}</author>
<link>${baseurl}showthread.php?p=${row['postid']}</link>
<guid>${row['postid']}</guid>
<description><![CDATA[${text}]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[]]></content:encoded>
<pubDate>${pubDate}</pubDate>
</item>
HERE;
}
}
?>
</channel>
</rss>
<?php
exit;
}