blog.tibidat.com

I just pushed the beta version of my commenting system for this blog to Github. Code-named talaria, it provides commenting for any file-identifiable¹ content via Github commit message comments.

talaria works based on a number of assumptions:

1. content (such as a blog post) is wrapped in a DOM container, such as a div or even better an article, which contains an a.permalink
2. the permalink can be used to figure out the actual path and filename of the content-source (such as a markup file)
3. the DOM provides the necessary nodes which talaria uses as template and reference points for comment insertion

A liquid template that enables usage of talaria would look structurally similar to the following:

...
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/comments.js"></script>
...
    <article>
        <header><a class="permalink" href="/permalink-to-post">A post</a></header>
        ...
        {% include comments-placeholder.html %}
    </article>
...
    <footer>
        {% include comments-template.html %}
    </footer>
...

The actual functionality is very simple and the majority of the work is handled by the Github API, but here’s a breakdown: talaria extracts all permalinks on the page. These are converted to the respective paths to the content source files. It then iterates over all files, querying the Github API for commits related to each file. Then it retrieves the comments for each commit. Retrieved data is cached locally² (if supported by the browser) using sessionStorage. The next steps entail sorting the comments based on their updated_at field and rendering them using the template snippets. Finally, talaria sets the href for the buttons to add comments, and, if the current URL indicates paginated content, the comments are initially left hidden and an appropriate “view comments” link is displayed instead, if not, the comments are displayed.

Writing talaria was a great way to experiment with $.Deferred(), which are totally awesome!