Export comments

[rhymes]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Now that dev.to has the option to export posts I think it's time to think about adding comments to the zip file.

I'm opening this issue to see if comments should be added and if so, how and with which attributes

Describe the solution you'd like

Comments have their own attributes but they're also part of a tree structure. Should the notion of the parent be part of the export? In which way?

It should also be decided which attributes are part of the exported JSON.

These are the attributes of the comment:

  create_table "comments", id: :serial, force: :cascade do |t|
    t.string "ancestry"
    t.text "body_html"
    t.text "body_markdown"
    t.integer "commentable_id"
    t.string "commentable_type"
    t.datetime "created_at", null: false
    t.boolean "deleted", default: false
    t.boolean "edited", default: false
    t.datetime "edited_at"
    t.string "id_code"
    t.integer "markdown_character_count"
    t.integer "positive_reactions_count", default: 0, null: false
    t.text "processed_html"
    t.integer "reactions_count", default: 0, null: false
    t.boolean "receive_notifications", default: true
    t.integer "score", default: 0
    t.integer "spaminess_rating", default: 0
    t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
    t.integer "user_id"
    t.index ["ancestry"], name: "index_comments_on_ancestry"
  end

[abraham]

What comments should be exported? Comments that the user had made? Comments on posts made by the user? If it's the later what are the expectations a user might have about their content being exported by somebody else. Are there UI affordances or documentation that needs to be updated to highlight this?

[rhymes]

Hi @abraham, you only export your own content, so it would be the comments of the user requesting the export. Same as with the articles.

The UI definitely needs to be updated:

[benhalpern]

Most of the fields here are "for the user" and a couple are "for the platform"

    t.integer "reactions_count", default: 0, null: false
    t.integer "score", default: 0
    t.integer "spaminess_rating", default: 0
    t.datetime "updated_at", null: false

These stand out as "for the platform" fields that should not be included.

[rhymes]

@benhalpern agreed, only one detail, the export for posts contains the reactions counts:

https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/blob/master/app/services/exporter/articles.rb#L39 (and line 44)

[maestromac]

Resolved with #1471