Accessing the latest comments on a site from the Stack API

Question

Context:

As a moderator on a relatively small beta site, I often notice spam, chatty, rude or entirely unrelated comments on old posts. It'd be nice if I had an easy way to monitor them. From the Stack Exchange API I can get hold of the ids of the latest 30 comments on my site.

Questions:

1. I'm not sure how to reconstruct the URL for a comment from the id alone. Any idea?

2. Can I get the latest (say) 100 comments from the API, instead of just 30?

3. Is there any existing userscript or feed which makes accessing the latest comments easier (possibly with direct links to the comments and preview of the texts in comment bodies)?

I know that the API returns a JSON file with details of the latest 30 comments, but that's not quite readable. Moreover, it doesn't provide direct links to the comments. For instance, a random entry in the JSON file looks like:

{
  "owner": {
    "reputation": 101,
    "user_id": 2374,
    "user_type": "registered",
    "profile_image": "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/353f68d18e56ed3adbb11da436814946?s=128&d=identicon&r=PG&f=1",
    "display_name": "Licheng Wang",
    "link": "https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/users/2374/licheng-wang"
  },
  "edited": false,
  "score": 0,
  "creation_date": 1557073730,
  "post_id": 6043,
  "comment_id": 9150
}

Answer 1

Reconstruct Url:

If you assume the variables:

• $site$ to be the website url
• $postid$ to be the id of the post the comment is on
• $commentid$ to be the id of the comment

https:// $site$ /q/ $postid$ ?#comment $commentid$ _ $postid$

will reconstruct that url (without the spaces). Don't get distracted by the /q/ there. It will work for answers as well as the server will redirect your browser correctly.

example:

https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/q/6043?#comment9150_6043

Get more then 30 comments:

add a &pagesize=100 to your url. But 100 is the maximum. If you want to fetch more, use the &page=2 parameter as well. Example:

/comments?order=desc&sort=creation&site=quantumcomputing&pagesize=100

Comments Feed

Unfortunately there isn't such feature. You either have to support existing ones or seek support with one of the Chat bot owner. I'm told SOBotics has Boson in the making (and does track comments now for quantumcomputing) and there is IPS Comment Bot which is used on IPS.se and polls that same API you use every 2 minutes. Alternatively I might take a feature request to add that to my Glitch app for feeds.

Answer 2

I wrote a little user script that adds a Comments item to your left nav and creates the related page on /comments. The API does not expose the question titles, however, therefore I was only able to show the comment body (in order to not run out of API quota). The page will also show the following information (additionally to the body):

• vote count (comment score)
• link count (if there are any)
• relative post date (links to comment)
• comment author and their reputation

Due to loading the comments after the DOM is already created for the first time, it is not possible currently to apply MathJax to the comments.

// ==UserScript==
// @name     SE recent comments
// @version  1
// @author   MEE (MSE user Id=364003)
// @include  https://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @include  https://*.meta.stackexchange.com/*
// @require     https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js
// @require     http://momentjs.com/downloads/moment.js
// @grant    none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

  $ls = $("#left-sidebar ol.nav-links ol.nav-links");
  $ls.append($('<li><a id="nav-comments" href="/comments" class="pl8 nav-links--link">Comments</a></li>'));

  if(location.pathname == "/comments") {

    site_url = location.hostname.split(".");
    if(site_url[1] == "meta")
      site_url = site_url[0] + ".meta";
    else
      site_url = site_url[0];
    API_URL = "http://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/comments?order=desc&sort=creation&filter=!1zsjS8AVj.74LEL_ufSaJ&site="+site_url;

    $("#nav-comments").parent().addClass("youarehere");
    $("title").text("Newest Comments");
    $c = $("#content").html("");
    $c.append($("<h1>Recent comments</h1>").addClass("fs-headline1 mb24"));

    $list = $("<div class='p1'>").text("Loading...");

    $.ajax({
      url: API_URL,
        method: "GET",
      success: function(comments) {
        if(comments.quota_remaining == 0) {
          $list.text("Sorry, you have exceeded your API quota for now.");
          return;
        }
        comments = comments.items;
        $list.html("");
        for(var c=0; c<comments.length; c++) {
          $list.append(render_comment(comments[c]));
        }
      }
    });

    $c.append($list);

  }
})();

function render_comment(comment) {

  rel_date = moment(comment.creation_date, "X").fromNow();

  $item = $("<div>").addClass("question-summary");
  $itemst = $("<div>").addClass("statscontainer");
  $itemst.append($("<div>").addClass("stats").append($("<div class='status unanswered'><strong>" + comment.score + "</strong>votes</div>")));
  if(comment.body.match(/<a/)) {
     count = comment.body.match(/<a/g).length
     $itemst.append($("<div class='views'>"+count+" links</div>").addClass("supernova"));
    }
  console.log(comment)

  $item.append($itemst);

  $items = $("<div>").addClass("summary");
  $item.append($items);

  $items.append($("<div class='excerpt'>").html(comment.body));

  $started = $("<div class='started'>");
  $items.append($started);
  $started.append($("<a href='"+comment.link+"'>").addClass("started-link").text("commented " + rel_date));
  $started.append(" ");
  $started.append($("<a href='"+comment.owner.link+"'>").text(comment.owner.display_name + (comment.owner.user_type == "moderator" ? "♦" : "")));
  $started.append(" ");
  $started.append($("<span>").addClass("reputation-score").text(comment.owner.reputation));


  $items.append($("<div>").addClass("p2").append($("<a href='"+comment.link+"'>").text("Go to comment")));

  return $item;

}