You're supposed to be using a third-party comment system not this.

But if you really need to, this package lets you add comments to your Eloquent models.

Play around with this demo project

$ composer require plmrlnsnts/commentator

Run the following command to publish config and migration files.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Plmrlnsnts\Commentator\CommentatorServiceProvider"

Run the migrations.

php artisan migrate

Next, register the routes to manage comments in the boot method of your AppServiceProvider.

use Plmrlnsnts\Commentator\Commentator;

public function boot()
{
    Commentator::routes();
}

Add the HasComments trait to your eloquent models.

use Plmrlnsnts\Commentator\HasComments;

class Article extends Model
{
    use HasComments;
}

To add a comment to your model, use the addComment method.

$article = Article::first();

$article->addComment(['body' => 'Better call Saul!']);

If you also support media files, pass an additional media attribute.

$article->addComment([
    'body' => 'Yo Mr. White! Check this out.',
    'media' => 'https://unsplash.com/photos/yplNhhXxBtM',
]);

A user can be mentioned using @ followed by a combination of alphanumeric characters, underscores and hypens.

$comment = $article->addComment(['body' => '@Pinkman']);

Call the mentionedNames method to retrieve an array of mentions.

$comment->mentionedNames();

// ['Pinkman']

Mentions are transformed to anchor tags by calling asHtml to a comment instance.

$comment->asHtml();

// <a href="/profile/Pinkman">@Pinkman</a>

The asHtml strips any html element except anchor tags to prevent xss attacks.

If you want to support nested comments, use the addReply method.

$comment->addReply(['body' => 'I am Heisenberg.']);

Commentator provides a JSON API that you may use to manage comments. This saves you the trouble of having to manually code controllers for creating, updating, and deleting comments.

This route returns a paginated list of comments for a given model. You need to pass the commentableKey, and an optional sort parameter to order the result from latest.

const params = {
    commentableKey: 'SOMESTRING',
    sort: 'latest',
    page: 1,
    perPage: 10,
}

axios.get('/comments', { params })
    .then(response => {
        console.log(response.data)
    })

This route is used to create new comments. It accepts two pieces of data: a body and/or a media.

const data = {
    body: 'Yo, Mr. White! Check this out.',
    media: 'https://unsplash.com/photos/yplNhhXxBtM',
    commentableKey: 'SOMESTRING',
}

axios.post('/comments', data)
    .then(response => {
        console.log(response.data)
    })

This route is used to update comments. It accepts two pieces of data: a body and/or a media.

const data = {
    body: 'Changed',
}

axios.patch(`/comments/${commment.id}`, data)
    .then(response => {
        console.log(response.data)
    })

Only comments that are owned by the authenticated user can be updated.

This route is used to delete comments.

axios.delete(`/comments/${commment.id}`)
    .then(response => {
        //
    })

Only comments that are owned by the authenticated user can be deleted.

This route returns a paginated list of replies for a comment. You may pass an optional sort parameter to order the result from latest.

const params = {
    sort: 'latest',
    page: 1,
    perPage: 10,
}

axios.get(`/comments/${comment.id}/replies`, { params })
    .then(response => {
        console.log(response.data)
    })

This route is used to reply to a comment. It accepts two pieces of data: a body and/or a media.

const data = {
    body: 'Yo, Mr. White! Check this out.',
    media: 'https://unsplash.com/photos/yplNhhXxBtM',
}

axios.post(`/comments/${comment.id}/replies`, data)
    .then(response => {
        console.log(response.data)
    })

Replies are comments too! So you can re-use the same routes for updating and deleting replies.

Commentator references the current User model as the author when adding comments. If you are using a different namespace, change them in config/commentator.php.

return [
    'models' => [
        'user' => \App\Models\User::class
    ]
];

The regular expression used to identify mentions, and the parsed link can be modified from the config file.

return [
   'mentions' => [
        'regex' => '/@([\w\-]+)/',
        'replace' => '<a href="/profile/$1">@$1</a>'
    ]
];