parent_id attribute for comments from pushshift API

[voussoir]

When requesting comments from the Pushshift API, parent_id is coming back as null for root comments, and integers for reply comments.

Another user reported this issue on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/ujwdyt/parent_id_is_being_returned_as_integer_bug/

For timesearch, we'll solve it by transforming this data in the dummy object so that by the time it reaches TSDB, it will be normal.

     def __init__(self, **attributes):
         for (key, val) in attributes.items():
             if key == 'author':
                  val = DummyObject(name=val)
             elif key == 'subreddit':
                  val = DummyObject(display_name=val)
             elif key in ['body', 'selftext']:
                  val = html.unescape(val)
+            elif key == 'parent_id':
+                 if val is None:
+                    val = attributes['link_id']
+                 elif isinstance(val, int):
+                    val = 't1_' + common.b36(val)

If you have a timesearch database and you need to repair the parent_id data, you do not need to re-download any of those comments. We would just take all rows with null and copy the submission ID, and all rows with int and run them through the b36 function.