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-+++
-date = 2021-04-23
-title = "Roll Your Own Static Commenting System in PHP"
-description = ""
-draft = false
-+++
-
-# The Terrible-ness of Commenting Systems
-
-The current state of affairs regarding interactive comment systems is, well,
-terrible. It is especially awful if you're a privacy conscious person who does
-not generally load third-party scripts or frames on the websites you visit.
-
-Even further, many comment systems are charging exorbitant fees for something
-that should be standard.
-
-Of course, there are some really terrible options:
-
--   Facebook Comments
--   Discourse
-
-There are some options that are better but still use too many scripts, frames,
-or social integrations on your web page that could impact some users:
-
--   Disqus
--   Isso
--   Remark42
-
-Lastly, I looked into a few unique ways of generating blog comments, such as
-using Twitter threads or GitHub issues to automatically post issues. However,
-these both rely on external third-party sites that I don't currently use.
-
-# Stay Static with Server-Side Comments
-
-The main issue for my personal use-case is that my blog is completely, 100%
-static. I use PHP on the back-end but website visitors only see HTML and a
-single CSS file. No external javascript and no embedded frames.
-
-So, how do we keep a site static and still allow users to interact with blog
-posts? The key actually pretty simple - I'm already using PHP, so why not rely
-on the classic HTML `<form>` and a PHP script to save the comments somewhere? As
-it turns out, this was a perfect solution for me.
-
-The second issue for my personal use-case is that I am trying to keep the
-contents of my website accessible over time, as described by @brandur, in his
-post entitled [Blog with Markdown + Git, and degrade gracefully through
-time](https://brandur.org/fragments/graceful-degradation-time) .
-
-This means I cannot rely on a database for comments, since I do not rely on a
-database for any other part of my websites.
-
-I blog in plain Markdown files, commit all articles to Git, and ensure that
-future readers will be able to see the source data long after I'm gone, or the
-website has gone offline. However, I still haven't committed any images served
-on my blog to Git, as I'm not entirely sold on Git LFS yet - for now, images can
-be found at [img.cleberg.net](https://img.cleberg.net).
-
-Saving my comments back to the Git repository ensures that another aspect of my
-site will degrade gracefully.
-
-# Create a Comment Form
-
-Okay, let's get started. The first step is to create an HTML form that users can
-see and utilize to submit comments. This is fairly easy and can be changed
-depending on your personal preferences.
-
-Take a look at the code block below for the form I currently use. Note that
-`<current-url>` is replaced automatically in PHP with the current post's URL, so
-that my PHP script used later will know which blog post the comment is related
-to.
-
-The form contains the following structure:
-
-1.  `<form>` - This is the form and will determine which PHP script to send the
-    comment to.
-2.  `<section hidden>` - This section is hidden from the user and is used to
-    ensure that we know which blog post sent the comment.
-3.  `<section>` Display Name (Optional) - Used to accept a display name, if
-    entered.
-4.  `<section>` Comment (Required) - Used to accept the user's full comment.
-    Markdown is allowed.
-5.  `<button>` - A button to submit the form.
-
-```html
-<form action="/comment.php" method="POST">
-	<h3>Leave a Comment</h3>
-	<section hidden>
-		<label class="form-label" for="postURL">Post URL</label>
-		<input
-			class="form-control"
-			id="postURL"
-			name="postURL"
-			type="text"
-			value="<current-url>"
-		/>
-	</section>
-	<section>
-		<label class="form-label" for="userName">Display Name</label>
-		<input
-			class="form-control"
-			id="userName"
-			name="userName"
-			placeholder="John Doe"
-			type="text"
-		/>
-	</section>
-	<section>
-		<label class="form-label" for="userContent">Your Comment</label>
-		<textarea
-			class="form-control"
-			id="userContent"
-			name="userContent"
-			rows="3"
-			placeholder="# Feel free to use Markdown"
-			aria-describedby="commentHelp"
-			required
-		></textarea>
-		<div id="commentHelp" class="form-text">
-			Comments are saved as Markdown and cannot be edited or deleted.
-		</div>
-	</section>
-	<button type="submit">Submit</button>
-</form>
-```
-
-# Handle Comments via POST
-
-Now that we have a form and can submit comments, we need to create a PHP script
-so that the server can fetch the comment data and save it. Make sure your PHP
-script name matches the name you entered in the `action` field in your form.
-
-See the code block below for the contents of my `comment.php` script. We perform
-the following tasks in this script:
-
-1.  Grab the POST data from the HTML form.
-2.  Sanitize the comment data with `htmlentities`.
-3.  Set the display name to `Anonymous` if it was left blank.
-4.  Create a PHP object that combines all of this data.
-5.  Check if our destination file `comments.json` exists.
-6.  If so, convert the PHP object to JSON and save it to the file.
-7.  If the `comments.json` file does not exist, the script will exit with an
-    error. You can alter this to ensure it creates the script, but my source
-    code includes the file by default, so it will always exist.
-8.  Finally, send the user back to the `#comments` section of the blog post they
-    just read.
-
-```php
-// Get the content sent from the comment form
-$comment = htmlentities($_POST['userContent']);
-$post_url = $_POST['postURL'];
-
-// Set default values if blank
-if (isset($_POST['userName']) && trim($_POST['userName']) !== "") {
-    $username = $_POST['userName'];
-} else {
-    $username = 'Anonymous';
-}
-
-// Create an empty PHP object
-$user_object = new stdClass();
-
-// Add object content
-$user_object->timestamp = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
-$user_object->username = $username;
-$user_object->comment = $comment;
-$user_object->post_url = $post_url;
-
-// Append JSON to file
-$file_name = 'comments.json';
-if (file_exists($file_name)) {
-    $source_data = file_get_contents($file_name);
-    $temp_array = json_decode($source_data);
-    array_push($temp_array, $user_object);
-    $json_data = json_encode($temp_array, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
-    file_put_contents($file_name, $json_data);
-} else {
-    die('Error: The "comments.json" file does not exist.');
-}
-
-// Send the user back
-header('Location: ' . $post_url . '#comments');
-```
-
-If you're using Apache, make sure the `www-data` user on your server has the
-correct permissions to your website directory or else it will not be able to
-write to `comments.json`.
-
-```sh
-chgrp -R www-data /path/to/website/
-chmod -R g+w comments.json
-```
-
-# Display User Comments
-
-Now that we can submit comments, and they are saved to the `comments.json` file,
-let's make sure we can show those comments in each blog post.
-
-The code block below shows the function I use to decode my `comments.json` file,
-check if the comments apply to the current post, and then display them.
-
-This piece of code should **really** be inside a function (or at least in an
-organized PHP workflow). Don't just copy-and-paste and expect it to work. You
-need to at least supply a `$query` variable depending on the page visited.
-
-```php
-$query = 'your-blog-post.html';
-
-// Load saved comments
-$comments_file = 'comments.json';
-$comments_raw = file_get_contents($comments_file);
-$comments = json_decode($comments_raw);
-$comment_section = '<section id="comments" class="comments"><h3>Comments</h3>';
-foreach ($comments as $comment) {
-    if ($comment->post_url == "https://example.com/post/" . $query) {
-        // Assign metadata to variables
-        $comment_timestamp = $comment->timestamp;
-        $comment_username = $comment->username;
-        $comment_content = $comment->comment;
-
-        // Parse the comment, in case it contains Markdown
-        $comment_md = Parsedown::instance()->text($comment_content);
-        $comment_html = new DOMDocument();
-        $comment_html->loadHTML($comment_md);
-        $comment_html_links = $comment_html->getElementsByTagName('a');
-        foreach ($comment_html_links as $comment_html_link) {
-            $comment_html_link->setAttribute('rel', 'noreferrer');
-            $comment_html_link->setAttribute('target', '_blank');
-        }
-        $comment_secured_html = $comment_html->saveHTML();
-
-        // Apply metadata to comments section
-        $comment_section .= '<div class="user-comment"><div class="row"><label>Timestamp:</label><p>' . $comment_timestamp . '</p></div><div class="row"><label>Name:</label><p>' . $comment_username . '</p></div><div class="row markdown"><label>Comment:</label><div class="comment-markdown">' . $comment_secured_html . '</div></div></div>';
-    }
-}
-
-echo $comment_section;
-```
-
-# Bonus: Create a 'Recent Comments' Page
-
-Finally, the last part of my current system is to create a Recent Comments page
-so that I can easily check-in on my blog and moderate any spam. As an
-alternative, you could use PHP's `mail()` function to email you for each blog
-comment.
-
-The code to do this is literally the same code as the previous section, I just
-make sure it is printed when someone visits `https://example.com/comments/`.
-
-# Possible Enhancements
-
-This comment system is by no means a fully-developed system. I have noted a few
-possible enhancements here that I may implement in the future:
-
--   Create a secure moderator page with user authentication at
-    `https://blog.example.com/mod/`. This page could have the option to edit or
-    delete any comment found in `comments.json`.
--   Create a temporary file, such as `pending_comments.json`, that will store
-    newly-submitted comments and won't display on blog posts until approved by a
-    moderator.
--   Create a `/modlog/` page with a chronological log, showing which moderator
-    approved which comments and why certain comments were rejected.