Linking directly to a comment

iamkeir · July 2006

Hi, I'm sure this has been covered, or that I am being a drongo, but I could find nothing in the doc/forums. I am uncertain how to link to directly to a comment in a discussion. I know Vanilla supports direct linking to the most recent comment, and you can use #item_x to link to a comment...but I am not sure how to access the actual #item_x URL. Any ideas?

remouk · July 2006

Actually there is no way, except by writing the proper extension. I had the same idea and planned to do this, but I don't know when.

Mark · July 2006

Well, if you know the text of a comment, you can search for it (use quotes around long sentences) and once you find it in the comment search results, right click the comment text and get the link from there. There is no way to get it directly from the comment without a helper extension. But that would be a pretty easy one to write.

remouk · July 2006

Ok, here is the Comments Permalinks extension. I hope that's what you were looking for.

Mark · July 2006

Nice work, remouk.

For the record, I took a look at it and saw that you had to resort to using a global variable. So, I added the $RowNumber to the delegate parameters collection in subversion. When the next revision comes out you'll be able to remove that global and just rely on the parameter.

erissiva · July 2006

You all are way too fast at writing extensions.
Or else, Vanilla framework is just waaaaayyy easy to understand.

Mark · July 2006

I made the quick little change so that it doesn't use the global, svn updated this forum, and added the new version of it onto here. thanks, remouk!

For the record, here is what I changed the source of the extension to here on lussumo.com/community:

<?php
/*
Extension Name: Comments Permalinks
Extension Url: http://lussumo.com/docs/
Description: Adds a "permalink" link to every comment, so you can share a single comment's url.
Version: 1.0
Author: Remi Cieplicki
Author Url: http://remouk.alt-tab.org/

You should cut & paste this language definition into your
conf/your_language.php file (replace "your_language" with your chosen language,
of course):
*/

$Context->Dictionary['Permalink'] = 'permalink';

function CommentGrid_Permalinks(&$CommentGrid) {
		$RowNumber = $CommentGrid->DelegateParameters['RowNumber'];
		$CommentList = &$CommentGrid->DelegateParameters["CommentList"];
		$CommentList .= '<a href="#Item_'. $RowNumber .'" id="Permalink_'. $RowNumber .'">' . $CommentGrid->Context->GetDefinition("Permalink").'</a>';
}

$Context->AddToDelegate("CommentGrid", "PostCommentOptionsRender", "CommentGrid_Permalinks");
?>

adrian. · July 2006

wouldn't this be possible in the template system?

Mark · July 2006

Of course it would - but this way you don't have to create a whole new theme that you then have to maintain.

adrian. · July 2006

I meant your default template. like make the user icon, the permalink to the file perhaps.

imathis · July 2006

Man... it just feels good to watch this stuff unfold! Hopefully I'll have time to contribute soon. Great job guys, and as always, Mark, you're the best!

iamkeir · July 2006

That's really fantastic guys, thanks. To have the solution turned around in one day is remarkable.

remouk · July 2006

Really cool Mark, I'll update it.

I have a question: naming my extension comments_permalink (as asked here), contrary to CommentsPermalinks (like most of the other ones) make it appear on the bottom of the extension settings. It doesn't respect alphabetical sort anymore. Shall we rename my extension, and modify the instructions?

P.S. Whispers must not have their own permalinks, I'll handle that (hopefully tomorrow).

bjrn · July 2006

Where does it say you have to call it comments_permalink instead of CommentsPermalinks? I think the "Name your add-on file like so: add_on_name.zip" just means your add-on archive should have the same name as the extension. All other extensions are using WikiWord like names.

Mark · July 2006

remouk - yeah, I renamed my copy to CommentPermalink so it would sort in the list properly. And good point about the whispers. I didn't think of that...

remouk · July 2006

Mark, to handle that properly, I think the best solution is to use the CommentId instead of that irrelevant ItemNumber. I want to had that: $Comment = $CommentGrid->DelegateParameters["Comment"]; in order to use $Comment->CommentID in my permalink. And for the permalink to work, I'll have to had another anchor, something like [a name="Comment_31265"][/a] (in html of course), but that's not really clean, having two anchors for the same place... What do you think about this?

Additionnal question: why is Vanilla using Item_id instead of the real Comment_id (which cannot change, even if there are whispers or hidden comments)?

Mark · July 2006

That's a good question. I think I might just change that...

imathis · July 2006

"P.S. Whispers must not have their own permalinks, I'll handle that (hopefully tomorrow)." - remouk

Hey remouk,
why not allow permalinks on whispers?

(btw the new look of the preview post is awesome)

Mark · July 2006

Well, if I change the anchor to be the id of the comment instead of the number of the comment, then it will work.

Bergamot · July 2006

That should also make a few other things easier, I would imagine.

Trey · July 2006

just a suggestion, since you have the forum going with the XHTML standards, you can always use the anchor thats associated with the ids on the list tags.. so instead of using <a name="Comment_33236"></a> you can just have it link to that comments id..

example