Isso – Ich schrei sonst

You love static blog generators (especially Acrylamid cough) and the only option to interact with the community is Disqus. There's nothing wrong with it, but if you care about the privacy of your audience you are better off with a comment system that is under your control. This is, were Isso comes into play.

Features

CRUD comments
SQLite
quite nice, but unfinished client-side JS

Roadmap

Ping/TrackBack™ support
simple admin interface
spam filtering using http:bl

Installation

Probably git clone https://github.com/posativ/isso.git, python setup.py develop inside a virtualenv. Then start isso with:

~> isso run

You can now leave a comment at http://localhost:8080/static/post.html hopefully. The admin interface password is p@$$w0rd, you may change this with a custom cfg file that I'll document later. You find the admin interface at http://localhost:8080/admin/.

Screenshot

Migration from Disqus

Go to Disqus.com and export your "forum" as XML.

~> isso import /path/to/ur/dump.xml

That's it. ~~Visit your admin page to see all threads.~~ If it doesn't work for you, please file in a bug report *including* your dump.

API (a draft)

To fetch all comments for http://example.tld/foo-bar/, run

$ curl http://example.tld/isso?uri=%2Ffoo-bar%2F

To write a comment, you have to POST a JSON dictionary with the following key-value pairs. Text is mandatory otherwise you'll get a 400 Bad Request. You'll also get a 400 when your JSON is invalid.

Let's say you want to comment on /foo-bar/

$ curl http://example.tld/isso/new?uri=%2Ffoo-bar%2F -X POST -d \
    '{
        "text": "Lorem ipsum ...",
        "name": "Hans", "email": "foo@bla.org", "website": "http://blog/log/"
     }'

This will set a cookie, that expires in a few minutes (15 minutes per default). This cookie allows you do modify or delete your comment. Don't try to modify that cookie, it is cryptographically signed. If your cookie is outdated or modified, you'll get a 403 Forbidden.

For each comment you'll post, you get an unique cookie. Let's try to remove your comment::

$ curl -X DELETE 'http://example.tld/isso?uri=%2Ffoo-bar%2F&id=1'

If your comment has been referenced by another comment, your comment will be cleared but not deleted to retain depending comments.

Alternatives

talkatv <https://github.com/talkatv/talkatv>_ – Python
Juvia <https://github.com/phusion/juvia)>_ – Ruby on Rails
Tildehash.com <http://www.tildehash.com/?article=why-im-reinventing-disqus>_ – PHP
SO: Unobtrusive, self-hosted comments <http://stackoverflow.com/q/2053217>_

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