Commentia
A flat-file, no DB server commenting system, with support for the versatile Markdown language, using the powerful SQLite3 DB for storage of data. Very easy to integrate into any, pre-existing website.
Install / Use
/learn @algb12/CommentiaREADME
Commentia – Documentation
Commentia is a plugin which adds a comment functionality to any webpage, and does not require any database server, but uses a flat file, SQLite3 DB to store data, and only requires PHP, GD, the SQLite3 module installed/enabled on the server, and Composer for PHP dependency bootstrapping and autoloader generation (both, GD and SQLite3 module usually come preinstalled by default, Composer is easy to install).
Even though CMSs with commenting functionality already exist, some people prefer to have a static website without any CMS, and still want commenting functionality. This plugin caters for these kinds of people. Also, this plugin is fully self-contained, that is, comments and users don't get stored in the website database, if it runs on one.
The following is a short documentation for Commentia, serving as a quick getting started guide, and providing some background information on its technical workings:
Dependencies
Composer
The only real dependency (besides php-gd and php-sqlite3, but they're probably installed already anyways) is the Composer dependency manager – it will manage all needed dependencies all by itself.
The user issues one command (composer install), and composer will automatically download all dependencies and dump the PSR-4 autoloader.
If need be, please read more on how to install composer.
Installation
Unpacking onto website
Unpack commentia into a separate folder (such as /var/www/example.org/public_html/commentia) or into the web-root, although a separate directory is recommended for security purposes.
Running Composer's install
In a command line, switch to the Commentia directory with the composer.json file. Then, run either composer self-update followed by composer install, or replace the command composer with composer.phar, depending on whether the .phar version of Composer is used or not.
This should install all the needed dependencies. A /vendor directory and composer.lock file will be created. Do not delete them, they are very important.
Modification of website code
Initialization
Once Composer has run, modify the website template or website to have the following code at the top of the page:
<?php
// Path to Commentia with trailing slash (root-relative)
$commentia_dir = '/path/to/Commentia/';
// Page ID
$pageid = x;
// Composer's autoload
require $commentia_dir.'vendor/autoload.php';
use Commentia\Controllers\CommentiaController;
// Include and initiate Commentia with unique page ID and path to Commentia
$commentia = new CommentiaController($pageid, $commentia_dir);
?>
Where x is the right side of the assignment for the $pageid, which can be any function/shortcode returning an ID for the page, such as:
- Wordpress's
get_the_ID() - Drupal's
$node->nid - MODX's
[[*id]]template tag.
And $commentia_dir is the path to the directory Commentia is in.
Throughout other parts of this README, the term commentia_dir will be referred to exactly as that. It should be a root-relative and not absolute path, as the same path will be used for loading of resources such as comment area CSS and avatar images.
The above just describes some of the popular CMSs' ways of getting the page ID. For static blogs, x can also be any manually entered page ID. Make sure to replace x with the relevant way of getting the page ID.
It is irrelevant whether $pageid is a number or an alphanumeric string, as Commentia is just checking under the given page ID for comments to display.
The only thing that does matter is that the page ID should be unique.
Modification of relevant tags
Now, just include 2 files in the head of the website, using the syntax which will locate the files in the $commentia_dir automatically. If, as supposed to, a root relative path is used, this code will automatically load all needed resources for Commentia. For this, modify the <head> tag as follows:
<script>
window.commentia = window.commentia || {};
window.commentia.APIURL = '<?=$commentia_dir?>api.php';
</script>
<!-- Commentia AJAX script + CSS for comments section -->
<script src="<?=$commentia_dir?>assets/commentia.js"></script>
<link href="<?=$commentia_dir?>assets/commentia-default-theme.css" rel="stylesheet">
Now, there should be a working instance of Commentia. Mind that for a folder-based structure, pages nested in folders may need $commentia_dir to be adjusted accordingly.
Displaying the comments section and login form
To display the comments section and login/signup form, use the following code:
<?=$commentia->displayComments();?>
<?=$commentia->displayAuthForm();?>
Technical details
Internally, each comment has a UCID, a Unique Comment ID. These are referred to as $ucid in the code. Each new comment would get a UCID of the last UCID + 1.
Manual changes can be made to the SQLite3 database by using an SQLite editor. A recommended editor is the DB Browser for SQLite.
Translatability
Note: If anyone has made good translations, it would be appreciated if they were shared with me. Just send me the file to my professional email: algb12.19@gmail.com. Thank you!
Both, translating the commenting front-end with an existing language and creating a new language is very easy. This is a list for language files currently included in the project:
- American English/American English):
en-US.php - German (Germany)/Deutsch (Deutschland):
de-DE.php - French (France)/Français (France):
fr-FR.php
###<a name='switch-language'>Switching the front-end language</a>
In order to switch the front-end language, all that has to be done is a modification of one line in the /commentia_dir/app/data/config.php file. The lexicon locale, COMMENTIA_LEX_LOCALE, is always the name of the language file without the .php extension.
The name of the language file always adheres to the language tag according to the RFC 5646 standard, with the extension .php appended to it.
E.g., for American English, the line would read
define('COMMENTIA_LEX_LOCALE', 'en-US');
And for German it would be
define('COMMENTIA_LEX_LOCALE', 'de-DE');
A full list of languages and their locales/culture codes can be found here.
Creating a new language
In order to create a new language, the en-US.php file has to be copied and renamed to the correct language for the target language, plus the .php extension in the same locale directory.
For example, if the target language is Chinese (China), the language code would be zh-CN, so the new file would be called zh-CN.php accordingly.
Open up the new language file and the en-US.php file side-by-side, and start translating. The format of each phrase is as follows: define('PHRASE_IDENTIFIER', 'Localized phrase'), where PHRASE_IDENTIFIER is an uppercase, underscore-separated string, clearly describing the meaning of a phrase, such as COMMENT_INFO_COMMENT_BY. Generally, the phrase identifier follows the pattern CATEGORY_OBJECT, e.g. COMMENT_INFO is the category and COMMENT_BY is the object. It is also why the phrases are grouped the way they are in the lexicon files. The localized phrase is just the translation.
To use the newly created language file, read the previous section on switching the front-end language.
Readiness for production use
Even though the system was tested thoroughly to not contain any bugs (please do open up issues if any are found), it did not undergo formal tests (e.g. PHPunit).
Unit tests are planned for future releases of Commentia.
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