Tutorial

This tutorial guides you through the steps to use every feature of django-comments-xtd together with the Django Comments Framework. The Django project used throughout the tutorial is available to download. Following the tutorial will take about an hour, and it is highly recommended to get a comprehensive understanding of django-comments-xtd.

Introduction

Through the following sections the tutorial will cover the creation of a simple blog with stories to which we will add comments, exercising each and every feature provided by both, django-comments and django-comments-xtd, from comment post verification by mail to comment moderation and nested comments.

Preparation

Before we install any package we will set up a virtualenv and install everything we need in it.

$ mkdir ~/django-comments-xtd-tutorial
$ cd ~/django-comments-xtd-tutorial
$ virtualenv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv)$ pip install django-comments-xtd
(venv)$ wget https://github.com/danirus/django-comments-xtd/raw/master/example/tutorial.tar.gz
(venv)$ tar -xvzf tutorial.tar.gz
(venv)$ cd tutorial

By installing django-comments-xtd we install all its dependencies, Django and django-contrib-comments among them. So we are ready to work on the project. Take a look at the content of the tutorial directory, it contains:

  • A blog app with a Post model. It uses two generic class-based views to list the posts and show a post in detail.
  • The templates directory, with a base.html and home.html, and the templates for the blog app: blog/post_list.html and blog/post_detail.html.
  • The static directory with a css/bootstrap.min.css file (this file is a static asset available, when the app is installed, under the path django_comments_xtd/css/bootstrap.min.css).
  • The tutorial directory containing the settings and urls modules.
  • And a fixtures directory with data files to create the admin superuser (with admin password), the default site and some blog posts.

Let’s finish the initial setup, load the fixtures and run the development server:

(venv)$ python manage.py migrate
(venv)$ python manage.py loaddata fixtures/*.json
(venv)$ python manage.py runserver

Head to http://localhost:8000 and visit the tutorial site.

Note

Remember to implement the get_absolute_url in the model class whose objects you want to receive comments, like the class Post in this tutorial. It is so because the permanent URL of each comment uses the shortcut view of django.contrib.contenttypes which in turn uses the get_absolute_url method.

Configuration

Now that the project is running we are ready to add comments. Edit the settings module, tutorial/settings.py, and make the following changes:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'django_comments_xtd',
    'django_comments',
    'blog',
]
...
COMMENTS_APP = 'django_comments_xtd'

# Either enable sending mail messages to the console:
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'

# Or set up the EMAIL_* settings so that Django can send emails:
EMAIL_HOST = "smtp.mail.com"
EMAIL_PORT = "587"
EMAIL_HOST_USER = "alias@mail.com"
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = "yourpassword"
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = "Helpdesk <helpdesk@yourdomain>"

Edit the urls module of the project, tutorial/tutorial/urls.py and mount the URL patterns of django_comments_xtd in the path /comments/. The urls installed with django_comments_xtd include django_comments’ urls too:

from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path(r'comments/', include('django_comments_xtd.urls')),
    ...
]

Now let Django create the tables for the two new applications:

$ python manage.py migrate

Be sure that the domain field of the Site instance points to the correct domain, which for the development server is expected to be localhost:8000. The value is used to create comment verifications, follow-up cancellations, etc. Edit the site instance in the admin interface in case you were using a different value.

Comment confirmation

Before we go any further we need to set up the COMMENTS_XTD_SALT setting. This setting plays an important role during the comment confirmation by mail. It helps obfuscating the comment before the user approves its publication.

It is so because django-comments-xtd does not store comments in the server until they have been confirmed. This way there is little to none possible comment spam flooding in the database. Comments are encoded in URLs and sent for confirmation by mail. Only when the user clicks the confirmation URL the comment lands in the database.

This behaviour is disabled for authenticated users, and can be disabled for anonymous users too by simply setting COMMENTS_XTD_CONFIRM_EMAIL to False.

Now let’s append the following entries to the tutorial settings module:

#  To help obfuscating comments before they are sent for confirmation.
COMMENTS_XTD_SALT = (b"Timendi causa est nescire. "
                     b"Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem.")

# Source mail address used for notifications.
COMMENTS_XTD_FROM_EMAIL = "noreply@example.com"

# Contact mail address to show in messages.
COMMENTS_XTD_CONTACT_EMAIL = "helpdesk@example.com"

Comments tags

Next step consist of editing blog/post_detail.html and loading the comments templatetag module after the extends tag:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load comments %}

Now we will change the blog post detail template to:

  1. Show the number of comments posted to the blog story,
  2. List the comments already posted, and
  3. Show the comment form, so that comments can be sent.

By using the get_comment_count tag we will show the number of comments posted. Change the code around the link element to make it look as follows:

{% get_comment_count for object as comment_count %}
<div class="py-4 text-center">
  <a href="{% url 'blog:post-list' %}">Back to the post list</a>
  &nbsp;&sdot;&nbsp;
  {{ comment_count }} comment{{ comment_count|pluralize }}
  ha{{ comment_count|pluralize:"s,ve" }} been posted.
</div>

Now let’s add the code to list the comments posted to the story. We can make use of two template tags, render_comment_list and get_comment_list. The former renders a template with the comments while the latter put the comment list in a variable in the context of the template.

When using the first, render_comment_list, with a blog.post object, Django will look for the template list.html in the following directories:

comments/blog/post/list.html
comments/blog/list.html
comments/list.html

Both, django-contrib-comments and django-comments-xtd, provide the last template of the list, comments/list.html. The one provided within django-comments-xtd comes with styling based on twitter-bootstrap.

Django will use the first template found depending on the order in which applications are listed in INSTALLED_APPS. In this tutorial django-comments-xtd is listed first and therefore its comment/list.html template will be found first.

Let’s modify the blog/post_detail.html template to make use of the render_comment_list. Add the following code at the end of the page, before the endblock tag:

{% if comment_count %}
<hr/>
<div class="comments">
  {% render_comment_list for object %}
</div>
{% endif %}

Below the list of comments we want to display the comment form. There are two template tags available for that purpose, the render_comment_form and the get_comment_form. The former renders a template with the comment form while the latter puts the form in the context of the template giving more control over the fields.

We will use the first tag, render_comment_form. Again, add the following code before the endblock tag:

{% if object.allow_comments %}
<div class="card card-block mb-5">
  <div class="card-body">
    <h4 class="card-title text-center pb-3">Post your comment</h4>
      {% render_comment_form for object %}
  </div>
</div>
{% endif %}

Note

The {% if object.allow_comments %} and corresponding {% endif %} are not necessary in your code. I use it in this tutorial (and in the demo sites) as a way to disable comments whenever the author of a blog post decides so. It has been mentioned here too.

Finally, before completing this first set of changes, we could show the number of comments along with post titles in the blog’s home page. For this we have to edit blog/post_list.html and make the following changes:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load comments %}

...
    {% for object in object_list %}
    ...
    {% get_comment_count for object as comment_count %}
    <p class="date">Published {{ object.publish }}
      {% if comment_count %}
      &sdot;&nbsp;{{ comment_count }} comment{{ comment_count|pluralize }}
      {% endif %}
    </p>
    ...
    {% endfor %}

Now we are ready to send comments. If you are logged in in the admin site, your comments won’t need to be confirmed by mail. To test the confirmation URL do logout of the admin interface. Bear in mind that EMAIL_BACKEND is set up to send mail messages to the console, so look in the console after you post the comment and find the first long URL in the message. To confirm the comment copy the link and paste it in the location bar of the browser.

_images/comments-enabled.png

The setting COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL is 0 by default, which means comments can not be nested. Later in the threads section we will enable nested comments. Now we will set up comment moderation.

Moderation

One of the differences between django-comments-xtd and other commenting applications is the fact that by default it requires comment confirmation by email when users are not logged in, a very effective feature to discard unwanted comments. However there might be cases in which you would prefer a different approach. Django Comments Framework comes with moderation capabilities included upon which you can build your own comment filtering.

Comment moderation is often established to fight spam, but may be used for other purposes, like triggering actions based on comment content, rejecting comments based on how old is the subject being commented and whatnot.

In this section we want to set up comment moderation for our blog application, so that comments sent to a blog post older than a year will be automatically flagged for moderation. Also we want Django to send an email to registered MANAGERS of the project when the comment is flagged.

Let’s start adding our email address to the MANAGERS in the tutorial/settings.py module:

MANAGERS = (
    ('Joe Bloggs', 'joe.bloggs@example.com'),
)

Now we will create a new Moderator class that inherits from Django Comments Frammework’s CommentModerator. This class enables moderation by defining a number of class attributes. Read more about it in moderation options, in the official documentation of the Django Comments Framework.

We will also register our Moderator class with the django-comments-xtd’s moderator object. We use django-comments-xtd’s object instead of django-contrib-comments’ because we still want to have confirmation by email for non-registered users, nested comments, follow-up notifications, etc.

Let’s add those changes to the blog/model.py file:

...
# Append these imports below the current ones.
from django_comments.moderation import CommentModerator
from django_comments_xtd.moderation import moderator

...

# Add this code at the end of the file.
class PostCommentModerator(CommentModerator):
    email_notification = True
    auto_moderate_field = 'publish'
    moderate_after = 365


moderator.register(Post, PostCommentModerator)

That makes it, moderation is ready. Visit any of the blog posts with a publish datetime older than a year and try to send a comment. After confirming the comment you will see the django_comments_xtd/moderated.html template, and your comment will be put on hold for approval.

If on the other hand you send a comment to a blog post created within the last year your comment will not be put in moderation. Give it a try as a logged in user and as an anonymous user.

When sending a comment as a logged-in user the comment won’t have to be confirmed and will be put in moderation immediately. However, when you send it as an anonymous user the comment will have to be confirmed by clicking on the confirmation link, immediately after that the comment will be put on hold pending for approval.

In both cases, due to the attribute email_notification = True above, all mail addresses listed in the MANAGERS setting will receive a notification about the reception of a new comment. If you did not received such message, you might need to review your email settings, or the console output. Read about the mail settings above in the Configuration section. The mail message received is based on the comments/comment_notification_email.txt template provided with django-comments-xtd.

A last note on comment moderation: comments pending for moderation have to be reviewed and eventually approved. Don’t forget to visit the comments-xtd app in the admin interface. Filter comments by is public: No and is removed: No. Tick the box of those you want to approve, choose Approve selected comments in the action dropdown, at the top left of the comment list, and click on the Go button.

Disallow black listed domains

In case you wanted to disable comment confirmation by mail you might want to set up some sort of control to reject spam.

This section goes through the steps to disable comment confirmation while enabling a comment filtering solution based on Joe Wein’s blacklist of spamming domains. We will also add a moderation function that will put in moderation comments containing badwords.

Let us first disable comment confirmation. Edit the tutorial/settings.py file and add:

COMMENTS_XTD_CONFIRM_EMAIL = False

django-comments-xtd comes with a Moderator class that inherits from CommentModerator and implements a method allow that will do the filtering for us. We just have to change blog/models.py and replace CommentModerator with SpamModerator, as follows:

# Remove the CommentModerator imports and leave only this:
from django_comments_xtd.moderation import moderator, SpamModerator

# Our class Post PostCommentModerator now inherits from SpamModerator
class PostCommentModerator(SpamModerator):
    ...

moderator.register(Post, PostCommentModerator)

Now we can add a domain to the BlackListed model in the admin interface. Or we could download a blacklist from Joe Wein’s website and load the table with actual spamming domains.

Once we have a BlackListed domain, try to send a new comment and use an email address with such a domain. Be sure to log out before trying, otherwise django-comments-xtd will use the logged in user credentials and ignore the email given in the comment form.

Sending a comment with an email address of the blacklisted domain triggers a Comment post not allowed response, which would have been a HTTP 400 Bad Request response with DEBUG = False in production.

Moderate on bad words

Let’s now create our own Moderator class by subclassing SpamModerator. The goal is to provide a moderate method that looks in the content of the comment and returns False whenever it finds a bad word in the message. The effect of returning False is that comment’s is_public attribute will be put to False and therefore the comment will be in moderation.

The blog application comes with a bad word list in the file blog/badwords.py.

We assume we already have a list of BlackListed domains and we don’t need further spam control. So we will disable comment confirmation by email. Edit the settings.py file:

COMMENTS_XTD_CONFIRM_EMAIL = False

Now edit blog/models.py and add the code corresponding to our new PostCommentModerator:

# Below the other imports:
from django_comments_xtd.moderation import moderator, SpamModerator
from blog.badwords import badwords

...

class PostCommentModerator(SpamModerator):
    email_notification = True

    def moderate(self, comment, content_object, request):
        # Make a dictionary where the keys are the words of the message
        # and the values are their relative position in the message.
        def clean(word):
            ret = word
            if word.startswith('.') or word.startswith(','):
                ret = word[1:]
            if word.endswith('.') or word.endswith(','):
                ret = word[:-1]
            return ret

        lowcase_comment = comment.comment.lower()
        msg = dict([(clean(w), i)
                    for i, w in enumerate(lowcase_comment.split())])
        for badword in badwords:
            if isinstance(badword, str):
                if lowcase_comment.find(badword) > -1:
                    return True
            else:
                lastindex = -1
                for subword in badword:
                    if subword in msg:
                        if lastindex > -1:
                            if msg[subword] == (lastindex + 1):
                                lastindex = msg[subword]
                        else:
                            lastindex = msg[subword]
                    else:
                        break
                if msg.get(badword[-1]) and msg[badword[-1]] == lastindex:
                    return True
        return super(PostCommentModerator, self).moderate(comment,
                                                          content_object,
                                                          request)

moderator.register(Post, PostCommentModerator)

Now we can try to send a comment with any of the bad words listed in badwords. After sending the comment we will see the content of the django_comments_xtd/moderated.html template and the comment will be put in moderation.

If you enable comment confirmation by email, the comment will be put on hold after the user clicks on the confirmation link in the email.

Threads

Up until this point in the tutorial django-comments-xtd has been configured to disallow nested comments. Every comment is at thread level 0. It is so because by default the setting COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL is set to 0.

When the COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL is greater than 0, comments below the maximum thread level may receive replies that will nest inside each other up to the maximum thread level. A comment in a the thread level below the COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL can show a Reply link that allows users to send nested comments.

In this section we will enable nested comments by modifying COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL and apply some changes to our blog_detail.html template.

We can make use of two template tags, render_xtdcomment_tree and get_xtdcomment_tree. The former renders a template with the comments while the latter put the comments in a nested data structure in the context of the template.

We will also introduce the setting COMMENTS_XTD_LIST_ORDER, that allows altering the default order in which the comments are sorted in the list. By default comments are sorted by thread and their position inside the thread, which turns out to be in ascending datetime of arrival. In this example we will list newer comments first.

Let’s start by editing tutorial/settings.py to set up the maximum thread level to 1 and a comment ordering such that newer comments are retrieve first:

COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL = 1  # default is 0
COMMENTS_XTD_LIST_ORDER = ('-thread_id', 'order')  # default is ('thread_id', 'order')

Now we have to modify the blog post detail template to load the comments_xtd templatetag and make use of render_xtdcomment_tree. We also want to move the comment form from the bottom of the page to a more visible position right below the blog post, followed by the list of comments.

Edit blog/post_detail.html to make it look like follows:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load comments %}
{% load comments_xtd %}

{% block title %}{{ object.title }}{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
<div class="pb-3">
  <h1 class="page-header text-center">{{ object.title }}</h1>
  <p class="small text-center">{{ object.publish|date:"l, j F Y" }}</p>
</div>
<div>
  {{ object.body|linebreaks }}
</div>

{% get_comment_count for object as comment_count %}
<div class="py-4 text-center>
  <a href="{% url 'blog:post-list' %}">Back to the post list</a>
  &nbsp;&sdot;&nbsp;
  {{ comment_count }} comment{{ comment_count|pluralize }}
  ha{{ comment_count|pluralize:"s,ve"}} been posted.
</div>

{% if object.allow_comments %}
<div class="comment">
  <h4 class="text-center">Your comment</h4>
  <div class="well">
    {% render_comment_form for object %}
  </div>
</div>
{% endif %}

{% if comment_count %}
<ul class="media-list">
  {% render_xtdcomment_tree for object %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
{% endblock %}

The tag render_xtdcomment_tree renders the template django_comments_xtd/comment_tree.html.

Now visit any of the blog posts to which you have already sent comments and see that a new Reply link shows up below each comment. Click on the link and post a new comment. It will appear nested inside the parent comment. The new comment will not show a Reply link because COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL has been set to 1. Raise it to 2 and reload the page to offer the chance to nest comments inside one level deeper.

_images/reply-link.png

Different max thread levels

There might be cases in which nested comments have a lot of sense and others in which we would prefer a plain comment sequence. We can handle both scenarios under the same Django project.

We just have to use both settings, COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL and COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL_BY_APP_MODEL. The former establishes the default maximum thread level site wide, while the latter sets the maximum thread level on app.model basis.

If we wanted to disable nested comments site wide, and enable nested comments up to level one for blog posts, we would set it up as follows in our settings.py module:

COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL = 0  # site wide default
COMMENTS_XTD_MAX_THREAD_LEVEL_BY_APP_MODEL = {
    # Objects of the app blog, model post, can be nested
    # up to thread level 1.
        'blog.post': 1,
}

Flags

The Django Comments Framework supports comment flagging, so comments can be flagged for:

  • Removal suggestion, when a registered user suggests the removal of a comment.
  • Moderator deletion, when a comment moderator marks the comment as deleted.
  • Moderator approval, when a comment moderator sets the comment as approved.

django-comments-xtd expands flagging with two more flags:

  • Liked it, when a registered user likes the comment.
  • Disliked it, when a registered user dislikes the comment.

In this section we will see how to enable a user with the capacity to flag a comment for removal with the Removal suggestion flag, how to express likeability, conformity, acceptance or acknowledgement with the Liked it flag and the opposite with the Disliked it flag.

One important requirement to mark comments is that the user flagging must be authenticated. In other words, comments can not be flagged by anonymous users.

Commenting options

As of version 2.0 django-comments-xtd has a new setting COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS that must be used to allow comment flagging. The purpose of it is to give an additional level of control about what actions users can perform on comments: flag them as inappropriate, like/dislike them, retrieve the list of users who liked/disliked them, and whether visitors can post comments or only registered users can do it.

It defaults to:

COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS = {
    'default': {
        'allow_flagging': False,
        'allow_feedback': False,
        'show_feedback': False,
        'who_can_post': 'all'  # Valid values: 'all', users'
    }
}

We will go through the first three options in the following sections. As for the last option, who_can_post, I recommend you to read the special use case Only signed in users can comment, that explains the topic in depth.

Removal suggestion

Enabling the comment removal flag is about including the allow_flagging argument in the render_xtdcomment_tree template tag. Edit the blog/post_detail.html template and append the argument:

...
<ul class="media-list">
  {% render_xtdcomment_tree for object allow_flagging %}
</ul>

The allow_flagging argument makes the templatetag populate a variable allow_flagging = True in the context in which django_comments_xtd/comment_tree.html is rendered. Edit now the settings module and enable the allow_flagging option for the blog.post:

COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS = {
    'blog.post': {
        'allow_flagging': True,
        'allow_feedback': False,
        'show_feedback': False,
    }
}

Now let’s suggest a removal. First we need to login in the admin interface so that we are not an anonymous user. Then we can visit any of the blog posts we sent comments to. There is a flag at the right side of every comment’s header. Clicking on it takes the user to a page in which she is requested to confirm the removal suggestion. Finally, clicking on the red Flag button confirms the request.

Users with the django_comments.can_moderate permission will see a yellow labelled counter near the flag button in each flagged comment, representing how many times comments have been flagged. Also notice that when a user flags a comment for removal the icon turns red for that user.

_images/flag-counter.png

Administrators/moderators can find flagged comment entries in the admin interface, under the Comment flags model, within the Django Comments application.

Getting notifications

A user might want to flag a comment on the basis of a violation of the site’s terms of use, hate speech, racism or the like. To prevent a comment from staying published long after it has been flagged we might want to receive notifications on flagging events.

For such purpose django-comments-xtd provides the class XtdCommentModerator, which extends django-contrib-comments’ CommentModerator.

In addition to all the options of its parent class, XtdCommentModerator offers the removal_suggestion_notification attribute, that when set to True makes Django send a mail to all the MANAGERS on every Removal suggestion flag created.

To see an example let’s edit blog/models.py. If you are already using the class SpamModerator, which inherits from XtdCommentModerator, just add removal_suggestion_notification = True to your PostCommentModeration class. Otherwise add the following code:

from django_comments_xtd.moderation import moderator, XtdCommentModerator

...
class PostCommentModerator(XtdCommentModerator):
    removal_suggestion_notification = True

moderator.register(Post, PostCommentModerator)

Be sure that PostCommentModerator is the only moderation class registered for the Post model, and be sure as well that the MANAGERS setting contains a valid email address. The message sent is based on the django_comments_xtd/removal_notification_email.txt template, already provided within django-comments-xtd. After these changes flagging a comment with a Removal suggestion will trigger a notification by mail.

Liked it, Disliked it

Django-comments-xtd adds two new flags: the Liked it and the Disliked it flags.

Unlike the Removal suggestion flag, the Liked it and Disliked it flags are mutually exclusive. A user can not like and dislike a comment at the same time. Users can like/dislike at any time but only the last action will prevail.

In this section we make changes to give our users the capacity to like or dislike comments. Following the same pattern as with the removal flag, enabling like/dislike buttons is about adding an argument to the render_xtdcomment_tree, the argument allow_feedback. Edit the blog/post_detail.html template and add the new argument:

<ul class="media-list">
  {% render_xtdcomment_tree for object allow_flagging allow_feedback %}
</ul>

The allow_feedback argument makes the templatetag populate a variable allow_feedback = True in the context in which django_comments_xtd/comment_tree.html is rendered. Edit the settings module and enable the allow_feedback option for the blog.post app.label pair:

COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS = {
    'blog.post': {
        'allow_flagging': True,
        'allow_feedback': True,
        'show_feedback': False,
    }
}

The blog post detail template is ready to show the like/dislike buttons, refresh your browser.

_images/feedback-buttons.png

Having the new like/dislike links in place, if we click on any of them we will end up in either the django_comments_xtd/like.html or the django_comments_xtd/dislike.html templates, which are meant to request the user a confirmation for the operation.

Show the list of users

With the like/dislike buttons enabled we might as well consider to display the users who actually liked/disliked comments. Again addind an argument to the render_xtdcomment_tree will enable the feature. Change the blog/post_detail.html and add the argument show_feedback to the template tag:

<ul class="media-list">
  {% render_xtdcomment_tree for object allow_flagging allow_feedback show_feedback %}
</ul>

{% block extra-js %}
<script
  src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js"
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script
  src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.3/umd/popper.min.js"
  integrity="sha384-ZMP7rVo3mIykV+2+9J3UJ46jBk0WLaUAdn689aCwoqbBJiSnjAK/l8WvCWPIPm49"
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script
  src="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.3/js/bootstrap.min.js"
  integrity="sha384-ChfqqxuZUCnJSK3+MXmPNIyE6ZbWh2IMqE241rYiqJxyMiZ6OW/JmZQ5stwEULTy"
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script>
  $(function() {
    $('[data-toggle="tooltip"]').tooltip({html: true});
  });
</script>
{% endblock %}

Also change the settings and enable the show_feedback option for blog.post:

COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS = {
    'blog.post': {
        'allow_flagging': True,
        'allow_feedback': True,
        'show_feedback': True,
    }
}

We loaded jQuery and twitter-bootstrap libraries from their respective default CDNs as the code above uses bootstrap’s tooltip functionality to show the list of users when the mouse hovers the numbers near the buttons, as the following image shows:

_images/feedback-users.png

Put the mouse over the counters near the like/dislike buttons to display the list of users.

Markdown

In versions prior to 2.0 django-comments-xtd required the installation of django-markup as a dependency. There was also a specific template filter called render_markup_comment to help rendering comment’s content in the markup language of choice.

As of version 2.0 the backend side of the application does not require the installation of any additional package to parser comments’ content, and therefore does not provide the render_markup_comment filter anymore. However, in the client side the JavaScript plugin uses Markdown by default to render comments’ content.

As for the backend side, comment’s content is presented by default in plain text, but it is easily customizable by overriding the template includes/django_comments_xtd/render_comment.html.

In this section we will send a Markdown formatted comment, and once published we will install support for Markdown, with django-markdown2. We’ll then override the template mentioned above so that comments are interpreted as Markdown.

Send a comment formatted in Markdown, as the one in the following image.

_images/markdown-input.png

Now we will install django-markdown2, and create the template directory and the template file:

(venv)$ pip install django-markdown2
(venv)$ mkdir -p templates/includes/django_comments_xtd/
(venv)$ touch templates/includes/django_comments_xtd/comment_content.html

We have to add django_markdown2 to our INSTALLED_APPS, and add the following template code to the file comment_content.html we just created:

{% load md2 %}
{{ content|markdown:"safe, code-friendly, code-color" }}

Now our project is ready to show comments posted in Markdown. After reloading, the comment’s page will look like this:

_images/markdown-comment.png

JavaScript plugin

Up until now we have used django-comments-xtd as a backend application. As of version 2.0 it includes a JavaScript plugin that helps moving part of the logic to the browser improving the overall usability. By making use of the JavaScript plugin users don’t have to leave the blog post page to preview, submit or reply comments, or to like/dislike them. But it comes at the cost of using:

  • ReactJS
  • jQuery (to handle Ajax calls).
  • Twitter-Bootstrap (for the UI).
  • Remarkable (for Markdown support).

To know more about the client side of the application and the build process read the specific page on the JavaScript plugin.

In this section of the tutorial we go through the steps to make use of the JavaScript plugin.

Enable Web API

The JavaScript plugin uses the Web API provided within the app. In order to enable it install the django-rest-framework:

(venv)$ pip install djangorestframework

Once installed, add it to our tutorial INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'rest_framework',
    ...
]

To know more about the Web API provided by django-comments-xtd read on the Web API page.

Enable app.model options

Be sure COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS includes the options we want to enable for comments sent to Blog posts. In this case we will allow users to flag comments for removal (allow_flagging option), to like/dislike comments (allow_feedback), and we want users to see the list of people who liked/disliked comments:

COMMENTS_XTD_APP_MODEL_OPTIONS = {
    'blog.post': {
        'allow_flagging': True,
        'allow_feedback': True,
        'show_feedback': True,
    }
}

The i18n JavaScript Catalog

Internationalization support (see Internationalization) has been included within the plugin by making use of the Django’s JavaScript i18n catalog. If your project doesn’t need i18n you can easily remove every mention to these functions (namespaced under the django object) from the source and change the webpack.config.js file to build the plugin without it.

Our tutorial doesn’t have i18n enabled (the comp example project has it), but we will not remove its support from the plugin, we will simply enable the JavaScript Catalog URL, so that the plugin can access its functions. Edit tutorial/urls.py and add the following url:

from django.views.i18n import JavaScriptCatalog

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path(r'jsi18n/', JavaScriptCatalog.as_view(), name='javascript-catalog'),
]

In the next section we will use the new URL to load the i18n JavaScript catalog.

Load the plugin

Now let’s edit blog/post_detail.html and make it look as follows:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% load static %}
{% load comments %}
{% load comments_xtd %}

{% block title %}{{ object.title }}{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
<div class="pb-3">
  <h1 class="text-center">{{ object.title }}</h1>
  <p class="small text-center">{{ object.publish|date:"l, j F Y" }}</p>
</div>
<div>
  {{ object.body|linebreaks }}
</div>

<div class="py-4 text-center">
  <a href="{% url 'blog:post-list' %}">Back to the post list</a>
</div>

<div id="comments"></div>
{% endblock %}

{% block extra-js %}
<script crossorigin src="https://unpkg.com/react@16/umd/react.production.min.js"></script>
<script crossorigin src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@16/umd/react-dom.production.min.js"></script>
<script>
 window.comments_props = {% get_commentbox_props for object %};
 window.comments_props_override = {
     allow_comments: {%if object.allow_comments%}true{%else%}false{%endif%},
     allow_feedback: true,
     show_feedback: true,
     allow_flagging: true,
     polling_interval: 5000  // In milliseconds.
 };
</script>
<script
  src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js"
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script
  src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.3/umd/popper.min.js"
  integrity="sha384-ZMP7rVo3mIykV+2+9J3UJ46jBk0WLaUAdn689aCwoqbBJiSnjAK/l8WvCWPIPm49"
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script
  src="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.3/js/bootstrap.min.js"
  integrity="sha384-ChfqqxuZUCnJSK3+MXmPNIyE6ZbWh2IMqE241rYiqJxyMiZ6OW/JmZQ5stwEULTy"
  crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script
  type="text/javascript"
  src="{% url 'javascript-catalog' %}"></script>
<script src="{% static 'django_comments_xtd/js/vendor~plugin-2.7.2.js' %}"></script>
<script src="{% static 'django_comments_xtd/js/plugin-2.7.2.js' %}"></script>
<script>
$(function() {
  $('[data-toggle="tooltip"]').tooltip({html: true});
});
</script>
{% endblock %}

The blog post page is now ready to handle comments through the JavaScript plugin, including the following features:

  1. Post comments.
  2. Preview comments, with instant preview update while typing.
  3. Reply comment in the same page, with instant preview while typing.
  4. Notifications of new incoming comments using active polling (override polling_interval parameter, see the content of first <script> tag in the code above).
  5. Button to reload the tree of comments, highlighting new comments (see image below).
  6. Immediate like/dislike actions.
_images/update-comment-tree.png

Final notes

We have reached the end of the tutorial. I hope you got enough to start using django-comments-xtd in your own project.

The following page introduces the Demo projects. The simple demo is a straightforward backend handled project that uses comment confirmation by mail, with follow-up notifications and mute links. The custom demo is an example about how to extend django-comments-xtd Comment model with new attributes. The comp demo shows a project using the complete set of features provided by both django-contrib-comments and django-comments-xtd.

Checkout the Control Logic page to understand how django-comments-xtd works along with django-contrib-comments. The Web API page details the API provided. The JavaScript Plugin covers every aspect regarding the frontend code. Read on Filters and Template Tags to see in detail the list of template tags and filters offered. The page on Customizing django-comments-xtd goes through the steps to extend the app with a quick example and little prose. Read the Settings page and the Templates page to get to know how you can customize the default behaviour and default look and feel.

If you want to help, please, report any bug or enhancement directly to the github page of the project. Your contributions are welcome.