Asp.net threaded comments?

One approach I remember seeing somewhere was rather than using a Comment ID and a Parent ID , comments had a Comment ID and a "sort key" which was a concatenation of all the Comment IDs of their ancestors.

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I am working on creating a blog in asp.net 4.0 and sql server 2008 and would like to learn how to create a threaded comments system. By threaded I mean each comment would have a reply link and the comments are indented under the comment that it is a reply to. So, you can either respond to the article itself or reply to any of the comments.

This is very common on forums and blogs but I cannot find any articles that would explain and show code example on how this is done. The following is what I have created but it only works one level of depth. I'd like to make it recursive so there is no limit to the level of depth:.

How can I do this? Any advice, articles with code samples would be awesome! Thank you!

My Comments db Table: commentId parentId postId date author authorEmail authorURL authorIP content IsApproved ASP. NET Markup: . ' target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> '>REPLY .

' target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> C#: #region Page_Load - GetComments() protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { GetComments(); } #endregion #region get comments method protected void GetComments() { // get required elements int article = int. Parse(Request. QueryString"article"); // connect to database SqlDataAdapter adapter = new SqlDataAdapter(); SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.

ConnectionStrings"dbMyCMSConnectionString". ConnectionString); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("sp_blog_GetComments", con); cmd. CommandType = CommandType.

StoredProcedure; cmd.Parameters. Add("@article", SqlDbType. Int).

Value = article; adapter. SelectCommand = cmd; // add tables to dataset DataSet ds = new DataSet(); adapter. Fill(ds); try { ds.Relations.

Add(new DataRelation("nestThem", ds. Tables0. Columns"commentId", ds.

Tables1. Columns"ParentId")); } catch { // } // ListView1 datasource ListView1. DataSource = ds; ListView1.DataBind(); } #endregion #region Databind repeaters protected void ListView1_ItemDataBound(object sender, ListViewItemEventArgs e) { DataRowView dv = e.Item.

DataItem as DataRowView; if (dv! = null) { ListView ListView2 = e.Item. FindControl("ListView2") as ListView; if (ListView2!

= null) { ListView2. DataSource = dv. CreateChildView("nestThem"); ListView2.DataBind(); } } } #endregion Stored Procedure: ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.

Sp_blog_GetComments ( @article int ) AS SET NOCOUNT ON; SELECT post_Comments. Author, post_Comments. AuthorEmail, post_Comments.

AuthorUrl, post_Comments. Content, post_Comments. Date, post_Comments.

CommentId FROM post_Comments INNER JOIN posts ON post_Comments. PostId = posts. PostId WHERE(post_Comments.

PostId = @article) AND (post_Comments. IsApproved = 1) AND (post_Comments. ParentId IS NULL) AND (posts.

IsPublished = 1) AND (posts. PublishOnDate.

– Tony Abrams Sep 21 '10 at 18:31 @Tony Abrams, I made the question bold on top. – anon445699 Sep 21 '10 at 18:39 Can anyone tell me how to extend this one more level? I realize that nobody knows how to create threaded comments but perhaps this question might be doable.

– anon445699 Sep 21 '10 at 21:07.

One approach I remember seeing somewhere was rather than using a Comment ID and a Parent ID , comments had a Comment ID and a "sort key" which was a concatenation of all the Comment IDs of their ancestors. E.g. If comment 1 had two replies, comments 2 and 3, the sort keys would be: 1 : 0001 2 : 0001.0002 3 : 0001.0003 Then if someone replied to comment 2, it would be.. 4 : 0001.0002.0004 So if you select all comments and sort by this sort key, they'll fall out in the right order.

Then, to do the indenting, you simply look at the length of the sort key to see how many levels deep the comment is, and indent an appropriate amount. Adding comments is easy: the sort key of the new comment is simply it's parent's sort key, with its own ID added on to the end.

Thanks for the reply! What data type would I use for this field? – anon445699 Sep 22 '10 at 20:30 1 Just a varchar.. make it long enough to support whatever limit you want to place on number of comments and nesting depth.

E.g. If you limit to 9999 comments per post, and replies 5 levels deep, the longest sort key would be like "9999.9999.9999.9999.9999" so you'd need varchar(24) – Carson63000 9 Sep3 at 0:37 1 Carson63000, Thank you for the suggestion. It was a little bit tricky to figure out all the details but I managed to get it done.

The hardest part was to get the number of dots to assign the css for the indent. The stored procedures were rather simple. For comments the sorting value is set equal to its own comment id value and for comment replies the value is set equal to the parent sorting id concatenated with it's own comment id separated by a dot.

If a sorting id has no dots, it is a top level comment. One dot equals one level depth, two equals two level depth etc. Thank you! – anon445699 Sep 23 '10 at 6:55.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.