petersuhm / commentable

Comments model for Laravel 4

Commentable

Commentable is a comments model for Laravel 4.

• Installation
• Basic usage
  • Inheritance
  • Interfaces
  • Adding comments
  • Retrieving comments
• Advanced usage
• Support and suggestions

Installation

Require "petersuhm/commentable": "dev-master" in your composer.json file and run composer update:

"require-dev": {
    "petersuhm/commentable": "dev-master"
}

Add the CommentableServiceProvider to the providers array in app/config/app.php:

'providers' => array(

    ...

    'Petersuhm\Commentable\CommentableServiceProvider',

);

Add a Comment alias to the aliases array in app/config/app.php:

'aliases' => array(

    ...

    'Comment' => 'Petersuhm\Commentable\Comment',

);

Finally, you need to run the migration for the petersuhm_commentable_comments table:

php artisan migrate --package=petersuhm/commentable

Basic usage

In order to use Commentable's Comment model, you have the following options:

1. Inherit from the Commentable and Authorable models, provided by Commentable. This way, you also get acces to the helper methods provided by these models.

2. Implement the CommentableInterface and AuthorableInterface interfaces in your models. This is useful, if you don't inherit from Eloquent in your models (maybe you use Ardent or something).

3. A mixture of both.

Inheritance

If you choose to let your models inherit from the Commentable and Authorable models, provided by Commentable, you gain access the helper methods, that these classes offer. This is the easiest way to utilise Comment in your app. You simply declare your models this way:

use Petersuhm\Commentable\Authorable;
use Petersuhm\Commentable\Commentable;

class User extends Authorable {}

class BlogPost extends Commentable {}

Interfaces

If you don't wish to inherit from the Commentable and Authorable models, you can instead implement the CommentableInterface and AuthorableInterface interfaces. This way, you will not be able to use the helper methods from Commentable and Authorable, unless you add them to your own models. In order to use Commentable's interfaces, declare your models this way:

use Petersuhm\Commentable\AuthorableInterface;
use Petersuhm\Commentable\CommentableCommentable;

class User extends Eloquent implements AuthorableInterface {
    
    public function comments()
    {
        return $this->morphMany('Comment', 'authorable');
    }
}

class BlogPost extends Eloquent implements CommentableInterface {
    
    public function comments()
    {
        return $this->morphMany('Comment', 'commentable');
    }
}

Adding comments

The Comment class has an add() function, which returns an unsaved comment instance. You can add a new comment like this:

$body = 'This is a test comment';
$authorable = User::first();
$commentable = BlogPost::first();

Comment::add($body, $authorable, $commentable)->save();

If you use inheritance, you can also use the addComment method:

$body = 'This is a test comment';
$authorable = User::first();
$commentable = BlogPost::first();

$commentable->addComment($body, $authorable)->save();

// Or the other way around:

$authorable->addComment($body, $commentable)->save();

Retrieving comments

Thanks to Eloquent, you can retrieve comments just like you would expect:

$authorable = User::first();
$commentable = BlogPost::first();

$authorable->comments;
$commentable->comments;

Advanced usage

If you wish to overwrite the Comment class provided by Commentable, you can do so by implementing the CommentInterfaceinterface in your own Comment model.

Support and suggestions

If you have any problems, or if you have some suggestions, discover a bug etc., feel free to open an issue!

Changelog

• Added indexes to comments table: Run composer update followed by php artisan migrate --package=petersuhm/commentable.