Comments¶

What does it do?¶

This extension provides commenting capabilities to TYPO3 pages or to virtually any TYPO3 record available in frontend in a single view (like single news item, single album image, etc).

Features¶

• Comment pages
• Comment records
• Comments are displayed in pages
• Highly customizable template, for example:
  • Number of messages per page
  • Show/hide fields to comments
• Available fields (labels can be customized):
  • First name
  • Last name
  • E-mail
  • Home page
  • Location (city, for example)
  • Comment
• Set fields as required or optional
• E-mail address syntax validation
• Fully localizable (including date format through PHP strtoftime() function)
• Automatically clear cache for any page(s) when comment is added
• Close comments after predefined period
• Close comments for individual records immediately or after period (through supplemental comments_ic extension)
• Prevent duplicate comments (for example, several subsequent POST requests)
• See IP address of the commenter in BE
• Spam control
  • Filter out typical guestbook spam
  • Force all messages to pass approval
  • Automatically decide if message should be approved before it can appear on the web page
  • Send e-mail to designated e-mail address about suspicious messages
  • Hook to connect external spam checkers
• Full TYPO3 caching supported (USER object!), which highly improves web site performance
• Automatic cleanup: removes comments if "parent" record is removed
• External CSS stylesheet can be included through the template (no need to modify web site TS setup for this!)
• Automatically use FE user data to fill comment form
• Extends tt_news to show number of comments in LIST, SEARCH and LATEST views
• Integrates ratings from “ratings” extension
• Automatically find links in comment text and convert them to clickable links (can be turned on and off)
• Lots of hooks to customize comments

Screenshots¶

There are screenshots also in other sections of this manual. This screenshot shows the default template with default styles with ratings enabled.

Inserting comments on a page¶

When inserting a new content element, scroll down to the end of the "New content element" wizard and select "Comments":

This will insert a plugin for commentis as a new content element. This operation has to be done twice: once for comment list, another for the comment form. See next section for details on configuring the plugin.

Customizing comments¶

All comments options can be configured either through TypoScript or through the plugin's configuration when it is inserted as a content element. TypoScript configuration should be used when the plugin is inserted through TypoScript. For information on TypoScript configuration options see "Configuration" section later in this manual.

Warning! Flexform configuration will always override the TypoScript configuration when corresponding field is set!

Plugin configuration consists of several tabs.

Approving comments¶

If a comment is set to “disapproved” because it may be spam or the Require approval of each comment option is set, comments will not be visible on the page instantly. An administrator will receive a notification e-mail with links to approve or reject comments. Alternatively it can be done through Web>List module. Disapproved comments have different icon in the List module:

The first comment record in the screenshot above is a disapproved comment. When opened for editing, this flag will set whether a comment is approved or not:

If the checkbox is set, the comment is approved.

Adding TypoScript template¶

The extension's TypoScript template must be added to site's TypoScript template for the plugins to work. To add a template, go to the Template submodule in the Web module, click Info/Modify and then Click here to edit whole template record . In the go to Include static (from extensions) and select Comments (comments) in the right box. It should then be added in the left box.

Main configuration¶

ratingsConfig < plugin.tx_ratings_pi1
ratingsConfig.additionalCSS = EXT:myext/res/ratings_css_for_comments.css

Advanced options (->ADVANCED)¶

Spam protection (->SPAMPROTECT)¶

Prefix-to-table map (->PREFIXMAP)¶

The comments extension must know the table name of the commented record to perform automatic cleanup. The extension's configuration contains a map of triggering prefix names to table names. By default it looks like:

prefixToTableMap.tx_album3x_pi1 = tx_album3x_images
prefixToTableMap.tx_commerce_pi1 = tx_commerce_products
prefixToTableMap.tx_irfaq_pi1 = tx_irfaq_q
prefixToTableMap.tx_mininews_pi1 = tx_mininews_news
prefixToTableMap.tx_ttnews = tt_news
prefixToTableMap.tx_news_pi1 = tx_news_domain_model_news

Extension authors who want to enable commenting for their records, may add entries to setup.txt for their own extension to extend this map. Here is an example:

plugin.tx_comments_pi1.prefixToTableMap.tx_myext_pi1 = tx_myext_mytable

So, if the URL looks like this:

http://www.example.com/index.php?id=12345&tx_myext_pi1[showUid]=67890

than the comments extension will understand that it must refer to tx_myext_mytable for triggering prefix tx_myext_pi1.

showUid map (->SHOWUIDMAP)¶

By default EXT:comments will try to get the commented record's uid using the showUid GET parameter. The comments extension needs to know the name to find the record's uid. By default, only EXT:tt_news and EXT:news are configured:

showUidMap.tx_ttnews = tt_news
showUidMap.tx_news_pi1 = news

It is possible to use custom parameters with the comments extension, here is an example:

plugin.tx_comments_pi1.showUidMap.tx_myext_pi1 = uid

So, if the URL looks like this:

http://www.example.com/index.php?id=12345&tx_myext_pi1[uid]=67890

than the comments extension will understand that the record's uid value is 67890.

tt_news¶

The comments extension provides a custom marker for tt_news to display the number of comments in List, Latest and Search views. The marker is ###TX_COMMENTS_COUNT###. By default it will produce the following HTML:

<a href="url/to/news/item#tx-comments-comments-uid" class="tx-comments-count">5 comments(s)</span>

This HTML can be customized by modifying the template that ships with the comments extension. See ###TTNEWS_COMMENT_COUNT_SUB### subpart in the template. The tt_news marker is typically included after the “more” link.

Using hooks¶

New hooks can be used from other extensions using the following code in ext_localconf.php in the other extension:

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['EXTCONF']['comments'][hookName][yourextkey] = 'EXT:yourextkey/class.tx_yourextkey_hooks.php:&tx_yourextkey_hooks->methodName';

Common hook parameters¶

Each hook uses two arguments:

Available hooks¶