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-#+title: Roll Your Own Static Commenting System in PHP
-#+date: 2021-04-23
-#+description: A simple guide to creating a commenting system in PHP.
-#+filetags: :dev:
-
-* 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
-[cite/t:@brandur], in his post entitled
-[[https://brandur.org/fragments/graceful-degradation-time][Blog with
-Markdown + Git, and degrade gracefully through 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
-[[https://img.cleberg.net][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.
-
-#+begin_src 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>
-#+end_src
-
-* 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.
-
-#+begin_src 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: ' . $post_url . '#comments');
-#+end_src
-
-If you're using Apache, make sure the =www-data= user on your server has
-the correct permissions to your website directory or else it will not be
-able to write to =comments.json=.
-
-#+begin_src sh
-chgrp -R www-data /path/to/website/
-chmod -R g+w comments.json
-#+end_src
-
-* Display User Comments
-Now that we can submit comments, and they are saved to the
-=comments.json= file, let's make sure we can show those comments in each
-blog post.
-
-The code block below shows the function I use to decode my
-=comments.json= file, check if the comments apply to the current post,
-and then display them.
-
-This piece of code should *really** be inside a function (or at least in
-an organized PHP workflow). Don't just copy-and-paste and expect it to
-work. You need to at least supply a =$query= variable depending on the
-page visited.
-
-#+begin_src 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;
-#+end_src
-
-* 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.