Comments block: Support nested comments settings in the comments blocks

[SantosGuillamot]

Fixes #44257

What?

Add support for the setting to "Enable threaded (nested) comments" and define the deep level in the recently create Comments block.

Why?

As described in the issue, they aren't respected right now in the new Comments block, while in the legacy one it does. As we can see there are mainly two problems:

• When the "Enable threaded (nested) comments" setting is disabled but there are nested comments, they still appear as different levels and they are repeated.
• When the levels deep is surpassed, it should respect the setting, and right now it is not happening.

How?

I added some variables to read the global settings and change the conditionals to respect them.

Testing Instructions

1. Open a Post with many levels of nested comments.
2. Change the "Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep" with different possibilities and ensure everything works fine. Some options to review: Enable/Disable the option and change the levels deep to a lower number.
3. You can compare the legacy block and the new Comments block switching between Twenty Twenty Two theme (using legacy block) and Twenty Twenty Three theme (using the new Comments block).

More detailed instructions can be seen in the issue.

[cbravobernal]

LGTM! Working as expected.

Trunk branch:

PR branch:

[carolinan]

I have not tested the PR -Looking at the after screenshot, the comments are still nested -just not as deep? Does the PR also solve the layout issues when the nested comments option is turned off?

[SantosGuillamot]

I have not tested the PR -Looking at the after screenshot, the comments are still nested -just not as deep?

Yes, it is nested until the level you define in that setting. It seemed to be the current behavior if I install the Twenty Twenty theme (not using the new block) for example.

Does the PR also solve the layout issues when the nested comments option is turned off?

Yes, it should solve this use case as well. I attach some screenshots of both cases to show what I mean:

Use case 1: Nested comments option is turned off

Settings

Twenty Twenty theme (with the old block)

Twenty Twenty-Three theme (with the new block)

Use case 2: Nested comments option is turned on and levels deep is 2

Settings

Twenty Twenty theme (with the old block)

Twenty Twenty-Three theme (with the new block)

Use case 3: Nested comments option is turned on and levels deep is 3

Settings

Twenty Twenty theme (with the old block)

Twenty Twenty-Three theme (with the new block)

We can see that the levels deep option is always respected and only the comments in that range admit a reply in all the cases.

Hope this helps 🙂

[ockham]

Thanks all! ❤️ I think this qualifies as a bugfix, so I'll add the "Backport to WP Beta/RC" label so it'll be included with WP 6.1.

Some notes:

1. A bit of test coverage would be great. Since we're more or less testing the output of the dynamic block, I think the best fit for test coverage would be here.
2. We probably also want the editor representation of the block to respect the threaded comments setting -- especially when used in the post editor (where we fetch existing comments for the current post and display them to better match the frontend output).

@SantosGuillamot @c4rl0sbr4v0 If you have some time to spare, could y'all maybe take care of that? For the editor representation (item 2.), ideally we can get it fixed by 16:00 UTC today so we can get it into Beta 2 😊

[SantosGuillamot]

I have just created this Pull Request to improve the UX in the Site Editor. However, as I point out there, making it work in the Post Editor is trickier as it gets real data from the REST API and it is not easy to handle nested comments. Anyway, the Comments block should be handled almost always from the Site Editor, so I believe that the way it is right now should be enough.

[ockham]

I just cherry-picked this PR to the wp/6.1 branch to get it included in the next release: 93d7c76