Automatic moderation with Django 1.0 Comments Post on Oct 16, 2008

This one was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. The Django comments framework was totally revamped for the Django 1.0 release, and it is now way mo betta :)

But! Even with all the new anti-spam stuff built in, I needed all comments to go into a moderation queue for a client site. At first I tried the pre_save hook to change the is_public flag on the comment, but there's no way (that I could tell) how to distinguish when the comment was submitted, and when it was moderated.

The solution

The Django folks are always thinking :) Then put in a sweet little hook called comment_will_be_posted that gets called when the user submits the comment. Hook in and change the 'is_public' flag to 'False', and the comments automatically go into the moderation queue.

The Code

from django.contrib.comments.models import Comment
from django.core.mail import send_mail
from django.contrib.sites.models import Site
from django.contrib.comments.signals import comment_will_be_posted
from django.conf import settings

def comment_set_public(sender, comment, request, **kwargs):
    # set the flag to false so it hits moderation
    comment.is_public = False
    
    # send an email
    subject = '%s > New Comment on %s' % (Site.objects.get_current(), comment.content_object.title)
    msg = """
You have a new comment on the item:\n%s\n\n
Comment text:\n%s\n\n
To moderate comments, visit the link below:\n
http://%s/comments/moderate/
          """ % (comment.content_object.title, comment.comment, Site.objects.get_current())
    send_mail(subject, msg, settings.COMMENT_FROM_EMAIL, [settings.COMMENT_TO_EMAIL])
    
    # from the docs: "If any receiver returns False the comment will be discarded..."
    # so there's much more potential for spam checking/protection
    return True

# the hook
comment_will_be_posted.connect(comment_set_public, sender=Comment)

Other goodies

Just for good measure, we put email notification in the same place which is handy (otherwise, how would you know comments were added?). The other super handy goodie with Comments 1.0 is they have added views for moderation also. Just point your browser to:

http://mysite.com/comments/moderate/

and you get a nice little view that looks just like the admin interface with which to moderate your comments. Obviously, if you're not logged in, it will prompt you to do so :)

Cheers, Af

PS: Here's a little screen to give you a taste:

Comment email notification in Django 1.0 on Webfaction Post on Oct 10, 2008

It's always nice to know when someone posts a comment on your blog, and if you're using something like Wordpress then email notification is already built in. Well, you guessed it, I'm not using Wordpress :)

The code

I got the original code to hook into signals sent from the comment system from here, but it's not compatible with 1.0. Thankfully, the fix is easy:

 
from django.contrib.comments.models import Comment
from django.core.mail import send_mail
from django.db.models.signals import post_save

def comment_notification(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    subject = 'New Comment on %s' % instance.content_object.title
    msg = 'Comment text:\n\n%s' % instance.comment
    send_mail(subject, msg, 'from@mysite.ca', ['mail-to-me@mysite.com']) # ideally these go in the settings 
    
post_save.connect(comment_notification, sender=Comment)

There were minimal modifications to make the code work from the original version, now the next trick is to get Webfaction to send my email.

Webfaction and send_mail

Wefaction won't just let you send mail right off the bat, you need to set up a mailbox and email address on your Webfaction account, and then change a couple settings in your project's settings.py file. I had found a forum post with the details but they implied I should be using 'mailx.webfaction.com' (x being my mail server number), but it wouldn't work. I recalled after that my outgoing mail server is 'smtp.webfaction.com'.

EMAIL_HOST='smtp.webfaction.com' 
EMAIL_HOST_USER='mymailbox' # < this should be the mailbox
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD='mymailboxpass' # < a valid password (obviously)
EMAIL_PORT='25'
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = "my-email@my-webfaction-account.com" # < the next 2 are the email address tied you your mailbox
SERVER_EMAIL = "my-email@my-webfaction-account.com"

And bada-bing! The mail comes through snappy fast too. Thank goodness for Django, black licorice, and Webfaction :)

Cheers, Aaron