Link to comments in the election [duplicate]

Question

I just tried to link some comment from the election page only to find out there is no link on the timestamp.

Is this by design? If so: can this be reconsidered. Sometimes I want to link to comments in chat which is not easy to do now.

To make my question a bit less dupe. The comments once linked by doing heavy manual labor (looking up the id in the DOM) also don't onebox in chat.

Answer 1

Not yet thoroughly tested. I confirm that it supports the case of loading more comment, and it should also support posting/deleting comment.

I have made some updates since my first revision to fix some bugs.

This is currently Revision 3

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Timestamp in Election comment
// @namespace      nhahtdh
// @include        http://stackoverflow.com/election*
// @grant          metadata
// @author         nhahtdh

function with_jquery(f) {
    var script = document.createElement("script");
    script.type = "text/javascript";
    script.textContent = "(" + f.toString() + ")(jQuery)";
    document.body.appendChild(script);
};

with_jquery(function ($) {
    function addCommentLink(ref) {
        $('.comment', ref).each(function () {
            $('.comment-date > .relativetime-clean', this).wrapAll($('<a href="' + '#' + this.id + '"></a>'));
        });
    }

    addCommentLink(document);

    $(document).ajaxComplete(function (e, xhr, settings) {
        if (/\/comments/.test(settings.url)) {
            addCommentLink(document);
        }
    });
});

Answer 2

You can construct a URL that will point to a comment.

All you need is to take a look at the id of the actual comment -

http://stackoverflow.com/election/4?#comment-21205321
-------------------------------------------^

It's not too comfortable, and a little hacky... but it works never-the-less!

Answer 3

Put your hands in the air like you just don't care (for such crass abstractions as jQuery)

Edit: slight improvement to expando link callback to prevent multiple calls and wait until all additional comments have been loaded

// ==UserScript==
// @name Election comment linkifier
// @description Linkify comment timestamps in SO moderator election
// @version 1.0
// @author DaveRandom
// @namespace https://github.com/DaveRandom
// @match http://stackoverflow.com/election/*
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

  function addLinksToUnprocessedPosts() {
    var i, l, linkSpan, linkText, anchorElement,
        comments = document.querySelectorAll('tr[id^=comment-]:not(.linkmaker-processed)');

    pending = false;

    for (i = 0, l = comments.length; i < l; i++) {
      linkSpan = comments[i].querySelector('span.comment-date span');
      linkText = linkSpan.firstChild;
      linkSpan.removeChild(linkText);

      anchorElement = document.createElement('a');
      anchorElement.href = '#' + comments[i].id;
      anchorElement.appendChild(linkText);

      linkSpan.appendChild(anchorElement);

      comments[i].className += ' linkmaker-processed';
    }
  }
  addLinksToUnprocessedPosts();

  var i, l, pending = false,
      expandoLinks = document.querySelectorAll('.comments-link');
  for (i = 0, l = expandoLinks.length; i < l; i++) {
    expandoLinks[i].parentNode.querySelector('tbody').addEventListener('DOMNodeInserted', function(e) {
      if (e.srcElement.nodeType === 1 && e.srcElement.tagName.toLowerCase() === 'tr' && !pending) {
        pending = true;
        setTimeout(addLinksToUnprocessedPosts, 0);
      }
    });
  }

}());

Tested in a real browser (Google Chrome), but I suppose if you must you may sully my fine craftsmanship by using it in that other one...