Comments on: Script Idea: Comment rating system

By: The Universal Church of Cosmic Uncertainty

The Universal Church of Cosmic Uncertainty — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Comments in MT RSS feeds
No no, don't worry. I'm not going to do it. But it came up in the comment stream over on Scripty Goddess and I'm not sure how to do it. I was going to go to Venomous Kate since she does that. But when I looked I realized she's not using MT. How 'bout J…

By: Julik

Julik — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

You can simply substitute the MT system of displaying comments with yours, which will make an SQL query for all the comments on every post page, and a JavaScript which will call a script to change comment rating (it will be called only when the rating is assigned). The query will call the MT comments table.
As long as you keep one SQL query for all the comments at once the overhead on the database will not be that high (every SQL request requires opening a socket and authenticating into the DB, which is essentially the biggest bottleneck).
Then in a loop where you show the comments you can make a switch in PHP for checking every comment's rating and update the styles accordingly.
The variant 2 is to have a script call in your MT template, which will add ratings to MT comments when the rebuilt document is loaded - this way you can still show the comments without ratings if your database is down (or the socket is clogged)

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah - I'm thinking that if I get impatient, I may just make a "mini" version of this script that is simply a "flag" the blog owner can turn on to highlight a comment… A little more "time intesive" for the blog owner, but personally I wouldn't mind doing it. I don't see this as a wildly popular script - probably the best use is a blog like this one.

By: Mad William Flint

Mad William Flint — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hmm… I'm not sure how the back-end works with flagging updates, especially within comments. MT already behaves nicely when a post itself is updated. (bloglines.com does a great job with this.)

The comment stream over at UCCU isn't interesting enough to put in the rss feed, so I never pursued it much.

HOWEVER, Venomous Kate does exactly what I'm thinking of (what, like the idea was MINE? Pff ;-P) I'll go ask her & report back.

By: Mark J

Mark J — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

The problem you brought up, Jenn, about having the DB checked for each comment, might be solved this way: for each entry, one database call is made… something along the lines of

"SELECT comment_id FROM mt_comment WHERE comment_highlighted = 1 AND comment_entry_id='$this_entry_id'"

This would return the comment_ids of all "highlighted" comments as an array. Then with each comment you could just do a simple php conditional… that checks to see if the comment currently being processed exists in the returned array.

That way there would just be one database call… and I don't think the simple check of the array for each comment will adversely affect the displaying of the page.

Think that would help?

This could also work for a rating system with numbers… not just the mini system.

"SELECT comment_id, comment_rating FROM mt_comment WHERE comment_rating > 0 AND comment_entry_id='$this_entry_id'"

By: Tyme

Tyme — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think it's an excellent idea. It's something that has been on forums for quite some time so I think if it is codely properly it will not be resource intensive or a bandwidth hog. Perhaps looking at the code of scripts (open source) who already have this function can give you some ideas on how to incorporate it into MT efficiently?

The thing to be cautious of is abuse - for example making sure that people can only vote once, etc.

By: Chasmyn

Chasmyn — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I just want to say publicly that Jennifer, you really are a goddess. You helped me so much! You are awesome. I bow to your coding skills. One day with much practice I will have a clue as to what I am doing, and I will owe it all you you!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Mad William - That I can do - but one question, I have a template that has the simple feed for posts and comments, but what do you mean by ""updates" being flagged when comments are added" - is that a different RSS template? I've only copied and pasted what others have done… if there's a template you would like me to use - point the way, and I'll implement it.

By: Mad William Flint

Mad William Flint — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

What would be extremely valuable is if you would make comments available in the rss feed itself, with page "updates" being flagged when comments are added. That way we could follow the discussions from our aggregators.

By: grave digger

grave digger — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

It is kind of a responsability to post a comment here, but all I want to say is that I enjoy your work a lot. Keep up!