Question

I created a nested comment library for Codeigniter and it’s almost working.

I can’t seem to output the nested comments without echoing each <ul> or <li> element. I don’t want the library writing anything directly, I want to save it to a variable and return it so that I can echo it out inside a view.

Here is the library code:

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Comments
{
    public $parents  = array();
    public $children = array();

    public function init($comments)
    {
        foreach ($comments as $comment)
        {
            if ($comment['parent_comment_id'] === NULL)
            {
                $this->parents[$comment['comment_id']][] = $comment;
            }
            else
            {
                $this->children[$comment['parent_comment_id']][] = $comment;
            }
        }

        $this->prepare($this->parents);

    } // End of init

    public function thread($comments)
    {
        if(count($comments))
        {
            echo '<ul>';

            foreach($comments as $c)
            {
                echo "<li>" . $c['text'];
                //Rest of what ever you want to do with each row

                if (isset($this->children[$c['comment_id']])) {
                    $this->thread($this->children[$c['comment_id']]);
                }

                echo "</li>";
            }
            echo "</ul>";
        }
    } // End of thread

    private function prepare()
    {
        foreach ($this->parents as $comment)
        {
            $this->thread($comment);
        }
    } // End of prepare

} // End of Comments class

The above code generates:

- Parent
    - Child
        - Child Third level
- Second Parent
    - Second Child

or in HTML:

<ul>
    <li>Parent
        <ul>
        <li>Child
            <ul>
                <li>Child Third level</li>
            </ul>
        </li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

<ul>
    <li>Second Parent
        <ul>
            <li>Second Child</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

This is the correct HTML, but echoing them out is not desirable.

What I tried to do was:

public function thread($comments)
    {
        if(count($comments))
        {
            $output = '<ul>';

            foreach($comments as $c)
            {
                $output .= "<li>" . $c['text'];
                //Rest of what ever you want to do with each row

                if (isset($this->children[$c['comment_id']])) {
                    $this->thread($this->children[$c['comment_id']]);
                }

                $output .= "</li>";
            }
            $output .= "</ul>";

            echo $output;
        }
    } // End of thread

This doesn’t work as expected and it generates the following when echo’d:

- Child Third level
- Child
- Parent
- Second Child
- Second Parent

or the HTML:

<ul><li>Child Third level</li></ul>
<ul><li>Child</li></ul>
<ul><li>Parent</li></ul>
<ul><li>Second Child</li></ul>
<ul><li>Second Parent</li></ul>

This is obviously not desired since it’s not nesting the comments.

I’ve been stuck on this all day, anyone have a suggestion on how I can get the list to be generated properly?

Answer 1

Try this:

public function thread($comments,$output='')
{
    if(count($comments))
    {
        $output. = '<ul>';

        foreach($comments as $c)
        {
            $output .= "<li>" . $c['text'];
            //Rest of what ever you want to do with each row

            if (isset($this->children[$c['comment_id']])) {
                $output.=$this->thread($this->children[$c['comment_id']],$output);
            }

            $output .= "</li>";
        }
        $output .= "</ul>";

        return $output;
    }
}

I haven’t tested it, but it looks like it should work!