Port from City Tech OpenLab: Rich text and media embedding for comments

[bree-z]

Can we add these plugins to CBOX OpenLab?

• http://redmine.citytech.cuny.edu/issues/2995: http://redmine.citytech.cuny.edu/issues/2995
• Allow media embedding in comments: http://redmine.citytech.cuny.edu/issues/3027

Thanks!

[boonebgorges]

Possibly. We will need to make decisions about how they get included, and specifically whether they're required and/or network-activated by default. Let's see how our summer resources shake out before moving forward.

[r-a-y]

Not sure how CBOX-OL is handling media embedding for comments, but I wrote an oEmbed plugin for comments that's quite simple: https://github.com/r-a-y/oembed-for-comments

[boonebgorges]

Thanks for chiming in, @r-a-y ! Your plugin was actually a starting point for what we ended up building for the OpenLab. It has some additional changes to account for guest-comments vs member-comments, and also compatibility layers for wp-grade-comments and the rich text comment tool we're working on. See https://github.com/openlab-at-city-tech/openlab/blob/1.7.x/wp-content/plugins/openlab-oembed-comments/openlab-oembed-comments.php

A question for you - You say https://github.com/r-a-y/oembed-for-comments/blob/master/oembed-for-comments.php#L85= that the shortcode() method needs to be overridden to account for comments rather than posts. Do you recall the details of this?

[r-a-y]

A question for you - You say https://github.com/r-a-y/oembed-for-comments/blob/master/oembed-for-comments.php#L85= that the shortcode() method needs to be overridden to account for comments rather than posts. Do you recall the details of this?

Yes, my oembed-for-comments caches oEmbed results into comment meta, so it needs to reference the comment ID and save to comment meta rather than the post ID and post meta. See https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/5214e469df26317c60b23d0b4719b787474d3d32/wp-includes/class-wp-embed.php#L195.

Some changes that WordPress has made to the WP_Embed class since I've written my plugin is introduce oEmbed cache expiry: https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/5214e469df26317c60b23d0b4719b787474d3d32/wp-includes/class-wp-embed.php#L246. Right now, my plugin caches once and doesn't expire. So that could be added as an enhancement.

It has some additional changes to account for guest-comments vs member-comments

I see that if a guest is posting a comment, oEmbed is disabled: https://github.com/openlab-at-city-tech/openlab/blob/412253756ae599c022e81416209dc24ff7daacc6/wp-content/plugins/openlab-oembed-comments/openlab-oembed-comments.php#L98-L100. Is that the main purpose for guest comments?

One other thing I see is allowing the <iframe> element: https://github.com/openlab-at-city-tech/openlab/blob/412253756ae599c022e81416209dc24ff7daacc6/wp-content/plugins/openlab-oembed-comments/openlab-oembed-comments.php#L113. Is this necessary for rich-text or certain embeds? If the embeds are targeted to a specific website, maybe an embed provider can be written for it instead?

[boonebgorges]

Yes, my oembed-for-comments caches oEmbed results into comment meta, so it needs to reference the comment ID and save to comment meta rather than the post ID and post meta.

Ah yes. I wonder whether this is strictly necessary, though. During normal comment rendering (ie in the comment section on the front end) the get_post() will always return the comment's post. You could then have cases where multiple comments belonging to the same post share the same cache for the same URL asset, but this feels like a pretty minimal risk. (In fact, you might call it overkill that WP caches a given embed separately on a per-post basis.)

Is that the main purpose for guest comments?

Yep, that's it. This was what the OpenLab folks wanted.

Is this necessary for rich-text or certain embeds? If the embeds are targeted to a specific website, maybe an embed provider can be written for it instead?

I'll have to look back to be certain, but I think it ensures that we support arbitrary embeds, such as those that are enabled by third-party plugins. That is, not oEmbed but regular embeds. So I'm not sure that one-off handlers would cover it.

[r-a-y]

During normal comment rendering (ie in the comment section on the front end) the get_post() will always return the comment's post.

It's more about segregating the respective data. Might be an edge case, but imagine a scenario with a rather, large comment thread with a ton of oEmbed links. Right now, all that data would be stored in postmeta and would be pulled in whenever a postmeta cache call is used.

One other thing I see is allowing the <iframe> element: https://github.com/openlab-at-city-tech/openlab/blob/412253756ae599c022e81416209dc24ff7daacc6/wp-content/plugins/openlab-oembed-comments/openlab-oembed-comments.php#L113.

Upon looking at the the 'olgc_private_comment_text' filter, correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't look as though this filter exists on the OpenLab anymore. So maybe the <iframe> code is left over from a previous implementation of WP Grade Comments?

[boonebgorges]

It's more about segregating the respective data. Might be an edge case, but imagine a scenario with a rather, large comment thread with a ton of oEmbed links. Right now, all that data would be stored in postmeta and would be pulled in whenever a postmeta cache call is used.

This is helpful context.

Upon looking at the the 'olgc_private_comment_text' filter, correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't look as though this filter exists on the OpenLab anymore. So maybe the <iframe> code is left over from a previous implementation of WP Grade Comments?

Actually, it's a new filter that hasn't yet made it into the production version. And now that I look at it, it might be linked at least in part to rich-text comment work that we're doing.

[bree-z]

Hi Boone,

I'm moving this to the future release milestone, to revisit after we implement the changes in 3180.

Thanks!