Question

I am making a Blog using MVC 3, Razor and Entity Framework. I am now working on the Comment section.

I am using the following table for comments.

Here I am using the ‘CommentParent’ column and setting it a value of an another ‘CommentID’ if a user is replying to a comment, else I have set a value of null.

Problem

I am using the following code to display comments,

@foreach (var comment in Model.Comments)
{
    <div>
        @comment.CommentContent
    </div>
    <br />
}

I am not sure how to display the “replyTo” comments as shown in the image below…

Please can anyone guide me as how this can be done…

Answer 1

First You will have to change your Model Class, Lets suppose your model class is :

public class CommentsModel
{
     Public Int64 CommentId {get;set;}
     ....
     ....
     //Introduce a new property in it as:
     Public CommentsModel[] ChildComments {get;set;}
}

This new property will hold the child comments of a specific comment up to N Level. Than in your View you can do it like:

@foreach (var comment in Model.Comments)
{
    <div>
    @comment.CommentContent
    </div>
    <br />
    @if(comment.ChildComments.Length > 0)
    {
        // Display Level 1 Comments and so on and so far
    }
}

You can manage the lookout of comments by using Css Class on Divs.