Comment Plugin

Comment Plugin lets users quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.

Related topics: CommentPluginTemplates, CommentPluginExamples

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax

Write %COMMENT{attributes}% anywhere in a topic.

(See also additional attributes)

Positioning the comment

%COMMENT supports several ways to specify where a comment should be inserted in the target topic. This is referred to as the location of the comment.

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

The default location is the %COMMENT tag itself. For example:

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

will add comments in the current topic, directly below the %COMMENT tag.

Location relative to an anchor

The target attribute may specify a web, and may also specify an anchor within the target topic; for example,

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

This uses a standard in-topic anchor as the insertion location. See TextFormattingRules for more about Foswiki anchors.

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

Getting more sophisticated, you can also specify a regular expression for the target location using the location parameter. The target topic is searched for the regular expression, and the comment inserted relative to the string that the search matched. For example,

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

will place comments above the first occurence of the string Flights of Fancy in the current topic.

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.
Also note that you cannot have the text location=" just before the location.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

Templates are used to define the "comment style" i.e. how comments appear in the page. The default is to add comments in "Blog like" style using bulleted lists, with the most recent comment at the top, but many other styles are available such as tables or Wiki thread mode comments. It is easy to define your own customer styles as well.

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin - see also CommentPluginTemplates:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

Customisation of the comment plugin requires

• familiarity with HTML forms
• some familiarity with the Skin Templates.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The plugin picks up these template definitions from a standard template file, templates/comments.tmpl. This allows different templates to be defined for different Foswiki skins.

Defining custom templates

By default, templates/comments.tmpl includes the topic CommentPluginTemplate, which contains all the shipped standard templates and in turn includes System.UserCommentsTemplate that can include non-standard customisations.

This allows for several levels of customisation:

1. To override all default templates, everywhere, change comments.tmpl to include a different topic (this customisation will be lost next time you upgrade, though).
2. To add site-wide local template customisations, add them to UserCommentsTemplate (create if it does not exist yet). You can redefine the standard templates here if you want, and your definitions will override the standard definitions.
3. To override templates on a web-by-web basis, add a topic UserCommentsTemplate to the web (this will replace System.UserCommentsTemplate)
4. To override templates for a specific skin, add them to System.UserComments<Skin>Template (where <Skin> is the name of the skin with the first letter capitalised, e.g. Pattern)

You can also define a comment template in a topic, by passing the topic location with templatetopic. For example:

%COMMENT{type="blogpost" templatetopic="BlogPostCommentTemplate" target="%TOPIC%" button="Add comment" }%

templatetopic accepts topic or web.topic syntax. See an example in CommentPluginExamples:templatetopic.

Templates are picked up by following the standard rules for locating template files. Note that you can use %TMPL:INCLUDE to include other files of templates.

Customisation example

Provide both a PROMPT and an OUTPUT definition:

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:myComment}%%TMPL:P{promptbox}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:myComment}%%TMPL:P{outputoneliner}%%POS:TOP%
%TMPL:END%

Call your custom comment with:

%COMMENT{type="myComment"}%

The PROMPT template

The PROMPT template defines the contents of an HTML form that is used to capture the comment. This form invokes the comment generator when submitted. Parameters to the comment generator are defined using standard HTML input fields, such as input, textarea and select. The user enters values for these parameters, and these are then available when the OUTPUT template is expanded, in the form of %URLPARAM%s.

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the <form> and </form> tags, unless you specify noform="on", in which case you have to provide them yourself. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

Providing attribute values

If an attribute is given to the %COMMENT tag that is not one of the standard attributes, then that attribute is taken as the name of a parameter to be expanded in the PROMPT template. Expressions in the template of the form %param|default% (e.g. %rows|3%, %button|Push me%) are expanded to the values given in the %COMMENT. For example, if the PROMPT template 'example' contains:

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

and the %COMMENT tag is:

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

then the template will be expanded as

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

Special macros

As well as support for all the usual macros in templates, the following special macros are supported in the PROMPT definition:

EXPERT Note that when a comment is saved, the save script is invoked on the target topic, with a number of parameters provided by the comment form. Normally the CommentPlugin will provide these fields in the form, but experts can also provide the fields themselves in order to get finer control over what is submitted, or you might want to define your own HTML forms that do comment submission. The parameters that the CommentPlugin recognises are as follows:

Note that comment_location overrides comment_anchor, and both override comment_index. Example, shows an "I Approve" button that adds your approval signature to the end of the topic:

<form method="post" action="%SCRIPTURL{save}%/%WEB%/%TOPIC%">
<input type="submit" value="I Approve" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_action" value="save" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_type" value="bottom" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment" value="I Approve" />
</form>

Customisation example with custom form template

Write a custom form in a topic.

• In the form set the location of the prompt with %COMMENTPROMPT%; the prompt will be positioned here.
• In %COMMENT use parameter noform="on"
• In %COMMENT use parameter templatetopic to point to the topic with the form template

Example form:

%TMPL:DEF{FORM:example}%
<form method="post" action="%SCRIPTURL{save}%/%BASEWEB%/%BASETOPIC%" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" name="examplecomment" id="examplecomment">
<input type="hidden" name="redirectto" value="%BASEWEB%.%BASETOPIC%" />
%COMMENTPROMPT%
</form>
%TMPL:END%

Example comment:

%COMMENT{noform="on" type="example" templatetopic="Sandbox.CommentPluginTemplateExample" target="%TOPIC%" button="Add comment" }%

The OUTPUT template

The OUTPUT template defines the format for the text that actually gets embedded into the topic. All the usual macros are available in the PROMPT definition, but note that they get expanded when the comment is inserted in the text, so time, date and username will refer to the time and date when the comment was made, and the user who made it.

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

Note that these position tags are obviously mutually exclusive. If you define more than one, the result is undefined. If none is present, the default is taken from the plugin setting DEFAULT_TYPE

All the usual macros that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template.

Settings

Two preference settings are recognised by the CommentPlugin:

These can be set in %USERSWEB%.SitePreferences, in WebPreferences, or in individual topics.

#Installation

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin is pre-installed in most releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:
• Download the archive file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unpack the archive in your Foswiki installation directory.
  • You may need to correct file permissions
• Run CommentPlugin_installer to automatically check and install other modules that this module depends on, and enable the plugin.
• Alternatively,
  • Manually resolve the dependencies listed below. None
• Use configure to enable the plugin

Note that if you want to use the action template then you must also:

1. Install the Foswiki:Extensions/ActionTrackerPlugin;
2. Put the CommentPlugin before the ActionTrackerPlugin in the {PluginsOrder} configuration option (in configure)

Plugin Info

Another great extension from the WikiRing - working together to improve your wiki experience!

Related Topics: SitePreferences, Plugins