CakePHP treated comments with pagination

Question

Is there a way to paginate comments in cakePHP with a tree behavior? Should I use tree behavior anyway or to make my own code to view the comments?

~~Sorry, this has been asked before. I found an article: Managing Hierarchical Data in MySQL ...and I will post my solution.~~

Nope, I didn't find a good solution. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, I do want to make it in the cake way.

I wrote a helper for recursively print the comments:

# view/helpers/comments
class CommentsHelper extends AppHelper{
public function printComments($comments = array(), $params = array()){

    if (empty($comments) || !is_array($comments)) return false;

    echo '<ul id="comments-'.$comments[0]['Forum']['id'].'">';
    if (is_array($comments)){
        foreach($comments as $comment):
            ?>
            <li id="<?php echo $comment['Forum']['id']; ?>">
                <div class="inner">
                    <h4><?php echo $comment['Forum']['title']; ?></h4>
                    <div class="meta">
                        <?php echo $comment['User']['first_name']; ?>
                    </div>
                    <div class="content">
                        <?php echo $comment['Forum']['content']; ?>
                    </div>
                </div>
            <?php

            if (isset ($comment['children']))
            if (is_array($comment['children'])){
                if (!empty($comment['children'])) $this->printComments($comment['children']);
            }
            echo '</li>';

        endforeach;
    }
        else{
            echo '<li>'.$comment['Forum']['title'].'</li>';
        }
    echo '</ul>';
}

Here is how I retrieve the data from the database:

# controllers/forums.php
$this->set('tree', $this->Forum->find('threaded'););

The problem is how to paginate the comments?

Currently I'm using 2 tables, one for the root and 2nd for the threaded comments. I didn't find a solution.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 05 '11 at 18:51

You have to do it manually in controller by paginate.

The key is properly order mysql query to find comment not by id by firstly by parent_id and then id (columns are just example) - that would work for 2 level comments:

    $this->paginate = array(
            'recursive' => -1,
            'conditions' => array(
                'Comment.blog_id' => 0,
            ),
            'order' => array('parent_id', 'id'),
            'limit' => 10   
    );
    $this->set('comments', $this->paginate('Comment'));

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 10 '15 at 10:58

You can achieve this as

Your modal code:

var $hasMany = array(
    'Pages' => array(
        'className' => 'Page',
        'foreignKey' => 'parent_id',
    )
);

Your Controller code:

$this->paginate = array(
        'Page' => array(
            'contain' => array(
                'Pages'
            ),
            'conditions' => array(
                'Page.parent_id' => null
            )
        )
    );
    $pages = $this->paginate();

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 22 '17 at 15:46

0

You should use tree behavior and order by lft.

answered Dec 22 '17 at 15:46

lenivo

1

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 30 '11 at 16:17

0

You can't. What I did is a link which switched between full threaded comments view AND flat paginated list.

answered Apr 30 '11 at 16:17

Sergei

2,747
1
17
16

And if I will use two tables? one for root and second for threaded comments? Maybe then I can paginate the root but the problem will be to get the data from the database. I don't want to split a thread into separate pages. – Sophia Gavish Apr 30 '11 at 16:39
Paginating threaded comments is really bad idea, and splitting the table too. However you can try to make collapsable/expandable threads. – Sergei May 01 '11 at 01:48

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 30 '11 at 16:28

0

IMHO: do you think that paginate comments is a good idea? just minimize space comments take on the page, and put them into one float. don't make your user to click too many links...

answered Apr 30 '11 at 16:28

Aziz

859
6
16

1

Every comment has a title and content, the user will click on the titles to see the content. This will save space and leave the user on the page. – Sophia Gavish Apr 30 '11 at 16:41

CakePHP treated comments with pagination

5 Answers5