New Recent Comments JSON Widget

Since upgrading to TBE 3.0, The Bleeding Ear has sported a Recent Comments widget in the sidebar. I hope you find it useful, or at least not annoying.

A couple days ago, my comments feed was down. Currently, my Recent Comments widget is just a feed widget, pulling the comments feed from blogger and using the native support to show date and author.

Well, because the feed went down, I started to look into what other people had done for comment widgets, and I realized that blogger puts the feeds out via JSON now. Well, I didn't know heads from tails about JSON, except that it can be used in javascript (something else I know little about), but I read that it would make the comments widget more customizable.

So, I found the url for the JSON comments feed, and pulled it so I could read through it. Then, with the help of a javascript from Tips For New Bloggers, I set about creating a new widget. That javascript wasn't good enough, so I found a script at Beautiful Beta that addressed my date problems. A quick mishmash of both scripts, plus some style changes, and voila!

So, I hope you like the new widget. Tell me what you think. If you want the code, I have it for you below (but all credit should go to the two blogs I referenced above):

<ul><script style="text/javascript">
function showrecentcomments(json) {
for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
var ctlink;
var commentdate = entry.published.$t;
var cdyear = commentdate.substring(0,4);
var cdmonth = commentdate.substring(5,7);
var cdday = commentdate.substring(8,10);
var monthnames = new Array();
monthnames[1] = "Jan";
monthnames[2] = "Feb";
monthnames[3] = "Mar";
monthnames[4] = "Apr";
monthnames[5] = "May";
monthnames[6] = "Jun";
monthnames[7] = "Jul";
monthnames[8] = "Aug";
monthnames[9] = "Sep";
monthnames[10] = "Oct";
monthnames[11] = "Nov";
monthnames[12] = "Dec";


if (i == json.feed.entry.length) break;
for (var k = 0; k < entry.link.length; k++) {
if (entry.link[k].rel == 'alternate') {
ctlink = entry.link[k].href;
break;
}
}
ctlink = ctlink.replace("#", "#comment-");
var ptlink = ctlink.split("#");
ptlink = ptlink[0];
var txtlink = ptlink.split("/");
txtlink = txtlink[5];
txtlink = txtlink.split(".html");
txtlink = txtlink[0];
var pttitle = txtlink.replace(/-/g," ");
pttitle = pttitle.link(ptlink);
if ("content" in entry) {
var comment = entry.content.$t;}
else
if ("summary" in entry) {
var comment = entry.summary.$t;}
else var comment = "";
var re = /<\S[^>]*>/g;
comment = comment.replace(re, "");

document.write('<li>');
if (comment.length < 50) {
document.write('<div style="font-size:90%;background-color: #E8EEFA;border: #C3D9FF 1px dashed;margin-right:5px">' + monthnames[parseInt(cdmonth,10)] + ' ' + cdday);
document.write(' - ' + entry.author[0].name.$t + ' commented on');
document.write(' ' + pttitle + ':</div>');
document.write(comment);
}
else
{
comment = comment.substring(0, 50);
var quoteEnd = comment.lastIndexOf(" ");
comment = comment.substring(0, quoteEnd);
document.write('<div style="font-size:90%;background-color: #E8EEFA;border: #C3D9FF 1px dashed;margin-right:5px">' + monthnames[parseInt(cdmonth,10)] + ' ' + cdday);
document.write(' - ' + entry.author[0].name.$t + ' commented on');
document.write(' ' + pttitle + ':</div>');
document.write(comment + '...<a href="' + ctlink + '">(more)</a>');
}
}
document.write('</li>');
}
</script>
<script src="http://thebleedingear.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentcomments">
</script></ul>
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