what is key difference between posting a new comment and replying to existing comments?

Question

I want to find out the key differences when assembling comment form between posting a new comment and replying to existing comments and how are they implemented in source code of django_comments_xtd?

I reviewed the source code for a quite a long time and did not find out the answer.

in replying, the system records the original comment post ID in the db so as to link with the newly inserted reply comment post — Ken Lee, Oct 08 '21 at 01:41
thanks for reply. but How are they implemented in source code in details please ? — Yan Tian, Oct 08 '21 at 02:09

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 08 '21 at 03:36

In django_comments_xtd , the system distinguishs whether a comment is a reply to a previous post / or a new , independent comment is by referring to the reply_to data field.

For a new comment, the reply_to field is having a default value of "0", but for reply to a previous commment (say ID=14), then the reply_to data field will be having a value of "14".

For the source code, One of the places you may refer to is the python file forms.py (an extract is attached below). For sure there are other places using this reply_to data field for rendering the site so you may search for the reply_to string to discover if you have further interests in this aspect.

class XtdCommentForm(CommentForm):
    followup = forms.BooleanField(required=False,
                                  label=_("Notify me about follow-up comments"))
    reply_to = forms.IntegerField(required=True, initial=0,
                                  widget=forms.HiddenInput())

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        comment = kwargs.pop("comment", None)
        if comment:
            initial = kwargs.pop("initial", {})
            initial.update({"reply_to": comment.pk})
            kwargs["initial"] = initial
            followup_suffix = ('_%d' % comment.pk)
        else:
            followup_suffix = ''

        super(CommentForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        self.fields['name'].label = _("Name")
        self.fields['name'].widget = forms.TextInput(
            attrs={'placeholder': _('name'), 'class': 'form-control'})

        self.fields['email'].label = _("Mail")
        self.fields['email'].help_text = _("Required for comment verification")
        self.fields['email'].widget = forms.TextInput(
            attrs={'placeholder': _('mail address'), 'class': 'form-control'})

        self.fields['url'].label = _("Link")
        self.fields['url'].required = False
        self.fields['url'].widget = forms.TextInput(attrs={
                'placeholder': _('url your name links to (optional)'),
                'class': 'form-control'})

        self.fields['comment'].widget = forms.Textarea(
            attrs={'placeholder': _('Your comment'), 'class': 'form-control'})
        self.fields['comment'].max_length = settings.COMMENT_MAX_LENGTH
        self.fields['comment'].widget.attrs.pop('cols')
        self.fields['comment'].widget.attrs.pop('rows')

        self.fields['followup'].widget.attrs['id'] = (
            'id_followup%s' % followup_suffix)
        self.fields['followup'].widget.attrs['class'] = "custom-control-input"
        self.fields['followup'].initial = settings.COMMENTS_XTD_DEFAULT_FOLLOWUP

    def get_comment_model(self):
        return TmpXtdComment

    def get_comment_create_data(self, site_id=None):
        data = super(CommentForm, self).get_comment_create_data(site_id=site_id)
        ctype = data.get('content_type')
        object_pk = data.get('object_pk')
        model = apps.get_model(ctype.app_label, ctype.model)
        target = model._default_manager.get(pk=object_pk)
        data.update({'thread_id': 0, 'level': 0, 'order': 1,
                     'parent_id': self.cleaned_data['reply_to'],
                     'followup': self.cleaned_data['followup'],
                     'content_object': target})
        return data

thanks for detailed answer. my question is fully answered now. but appreciate if you can further share some insights, in **how can I directly pop up the reply dialog box (generate correct `form` contents in other words) when user click "reply" to reply to existing comment?** as I do not want user to be redirected to another URL for reply. I realized I just need to pass `form = get_form()(comment.content_object, comment=comment)` into template tag `{% include comments/form.html %}` as extra keyword, but I failed to figure it out without major customization in `django_comment_xtd` package. — Yan Tian, Oct 08 '21 at 04:10

what is key difference between posting a new comment and replying to existing comments?

1 Answers1