o-comment-ui

📢 The commenting platform for ft.com, the app, interactive graphics & alphaville is currently being replaced. Please speak to the Comments team if you intend to start using this component or which to make any changes to it.

JavaScript module which incorporates common UI elements of the FT commenting system like dialogs, forms, common parts of a commenting widget with DOM manipulation and a unified way to load it.

Contents

• JavaScript API
  • Widget
  • Widget UI
  • Dialogs
  • Templates
  • Internationalization
  • Logging
• Sass API
  • Font family
• Browser support
• Core/enhanced experience

JavaScript API

Widget

Widget is responsible to coordinate getting initialization data, initializing the Ui. While this class implements some of the basic functionality (handling errors, loading timeout), it should be extended by providing an implementation for getting the initialization data.

Constructor

new oCommentUi.Widget(config);

To create an instance, you need to provide a configuration object. This should have the following structure:

Mandatory fields:

• articleId: ID of the article, any string
• url: canonical URL of the page
• title: Title of the page

Optional fields:

• timeout: Period of time after a timeout is triggered. Default is 15000 ms (15 sec). Its value should be given in milliseconds (ms).

Example

new oCommentUi.Widget(el, {
    articleId: 'e113c91c-10d9-11e4-812b-00144feabdc0',
    url: 'http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e113c91c-10d9-11e4-812b-00144feabdc0.html',
    title: 'Rolls-Royce seeks to catch-up with rivals on margins - FT.com'
});

Final methods

init

This method will initiate the process of loading the initialization data that are needed to render the widget and the rendering of the UI. This method uses hook methods which are not implemented in this module, but should be implemented in the module that extends it. init will handle errors of the process of loading the widget, also timeout if an error is not available.

This method can be called once on an instance (calling it multiple types will have no effect).

Abstract methods (not implemented in this module)

loadInitData

This method is responsible for gathering data that is needed to initialize the widget (e.g. metadata, site ID, comments, etc.).

render

This method is responsible for rendering the UI of the widget on the page. Render is called when the initialization process is done. This method is called using the data gathered during the init process:

this.render(initData);

Methods that can be overriden (they have default implementation)

onError

This method is responsible to handle any error that appears during the initialization.

this.onError(errorObject);

The default implementation clears out the container of the widget and shows the unavailable message template (available using the template object).

onTimeout

This method is responsible to handle the case when within a given time the loading isn't finished and no error appeared.

The default implementation clears out the container of the widget and shows the unavailable message template (available using the template object).

Extend

Extending of the Widget can be done in the following way:

var WidgetExtend = function () {
    oCommentUi.Widget.apply(this, arguments);
}
oCommentUi.Widget.__extend(WidgetExtend, {eventNamespace}, {classNamespace});

Example from o-comments:

var Widget = function () {
    oCommentUi.Widget.apply(this, arguments);
}
oCommentUi.Widget.__extend(Widget, 'oComments', 'o-comments');

Widget UI

This class is responsible to handle the UI part of a commenting widget. An instance of this is created within an instance of the Widget. While this implementation has predefined methods, it can be extended with particular UI methods.

Constructor

new oCommentUi.WidgetUi(widgetContainer);

Where widgetContainer should be a DOM element in which the widget is loaded.

Methods

scrollToWidget

Scrolls the page to the widget. A callback function is called when the scroll finished (optional).

addNotAvailableMessage

Inserts message when comments is not available, either because of the web services or Livefyre.

clearContainer

Clears the container's content.

Extend

Extending of Widget can be done in the following way:

var WidgetUiExtend = function () {
    oCommentUi.WidgetUi.apply(this, arguments);
}
oCommentUi.WidgetUi.extend(WidgetUiExtend);

Dialogs

Generic Ui functionality which is common across all istances of the comments. These are mostly dialogs which show on the page and are unrelated to the Widget's container or widget instance.

The features are available on the following object:

oCommentUi.userDialogs

Methods

showSetPseudonymDialog

Shows a dialog for setting the initial pseudonym (shown when the user doesn't have a pseudonym set).

oCommentUi.userDialogs.showSetPseudonymDialog({
    submit: function (formData, callback) {
        // called when the form is submitted
    },
    close: function () {
        // called when the dialog is closed by a user action
    }
});

showSettingsDialog

Settings dialog where the user can change its pseudonym or email preferences.

oCommentUi.userDialogs.showSettingsDialog({
        displayName: 'currentPseudonym',
        settings: {
            emaillikes: 'never'
        }
    },
    {
        submit: function (formData, callback) {
            // called when the form is submitted
        },
        close: function () {
            // called when the dialog is closed by a user action
        }
    });

showEmailAlertDialog

Shows a dialog which reminds the user to save its email preferences if he/she didn't do so.

commentUi.userDialogs.showEmailAlertDialog({
    submit: function (formData, callback) {
        // called when the form is submitted
    },
    close: function () {
        // called when the dialog is closed by a user action
    }
});

showInactivityMessage

Shows a dialog with a sign in link to re-login after a session expire.

commentUi.userDialogs.showInactivityMessage({
    submit: function (formData, callback) {
        // called when the form is submitted
    },
    close: function () {
        // called when the dialog is closed by a user action
    }
});

Parameters

All functions of userDialogs has the same callback parameter structure, which should be an object with the following fields:

submit

Required. Function that is called when the form is submitted. As parameters the form data is provided (serialized into an object of key-value pairs), and a callback which should be called with either an error message (if an error occurred) or without parameters if submission is successful. Example:

callbacks.submit({
    formKey: 'formValue'
}, function (err) {
    if (err) {
        // show the error message, leave the dialog open
        return;
    }

    // success, close the dialog
}
});

close

Optional. Function that is called when the dialog is closed.

Templates

This contains common Mustache templates which are compiled and can be rendered with custom data.

The templates are available on the following object:

oCommentUi.templates

Templates that are available:

unavailableTemplate

Message that appears when an error occured or loading the widget takes longer than the timeout period. It has a default style added.

Parameters:

• message: message to show. By default i18n.unavailable is used to render within the WidgetUi.

termsAndGuidelinesTemplate

Terms and guidelines message with default style. Requires no parameters to render.

commentingSettingsLink

Link that is used for changing user settings.

Parameters:

• label: Label of the link. i18n.commentingSettings can be used for it.

clearLine

Clearfix. Separates rows horizontally that have float.

These templates can be overriden on a global level.

Internationalization

Internationalization is responsible to provide common messages/texts that are used within the commenting application.

The strings are available on the following object:

oCommentUi.i18n

It exposes the following:

texts

Contains generic messages:

• unavailable: Message that is shown when the widget is unavailable
• changePseudonymError: Generic error when changing the pseudonym fails and no error message is coming from the server.
• genericError: Generic error message.
• commetingSettings: label of the commenting settings link "Commenting settings".

serviceMessageOverrides

Some error messages that come from the web services are not very user friendly. These messages are mapped to more user friendly versions that can be shown to the user.

Logging

Logging can be enabled for debugging purposes. It logs using the global 'console' if available (if not, nothing happens and it degrades gracefully). By default logging is disabled.

oChat.enableLogging()

This method enables logging of the module.

oChat.disableLogging()

This method disables logging of the module.

oChat.setLoggingLevel(level)

This method sets the logging level. This could be a number from 0 to 4 (where 0 is debug, 4 is error), or a string from the available methods of 'console' (debug, log, info, warn, error). Default is 3 (warn).

Sass API

Font-family

There is a default font-family set for o-comment-ui: MetricWeb, serif Please note that the font itself is not loaded by this module, this should be done by the product.

In order to override the default font, set a value for the following variable:

$o-comment-ui-font-family: font1, font2;

In order to suppress downloading the web fonts set the following variable

$o-comment-ui-include-fonts: false;

Browser support

Works in accordance with our support policy

Core/Enhanced Experience

Only the enhanced experience offers any kind of commenting functionality. Core functionality will be added in due course.