Open-source self-hosted comments

Comparison table for open-source self-hosted commenting servers (lisakov.com/projects/open-source-comments/). Inspired by staticsitegenerators.net.

Workflow

• The data are stored in data.yaml. This file is edited manually.

• get_gh_data.py:

  • creates apigh/<YYYY-MM-DD>/ directory if does not exist;
  • downloads (using system curl) https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo and https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/commits/master to the created directory;
  • reads these files and updates data.yaml for the following:
    • Github stars,
    • Github stars in the latest N days,
    • latest commit date,
    • creation date,
    • license.

• yaml_2_js.py converts data.yaml to data.js (it defines two variables — osc_data and cols).

• index.html reads data.js and parses it to the html table using datatables.js.

• The webpage is updated daily at 17:00 UTC via cron. updater.sh runs get_gh_data.py, then yaml_2_js.py, then deploys the updated files, then updates the repo.

How to view the page locally

Clone the repo and open index.html in your browser. To change it, edit index.md and run python3 md_to_html.py. It will overwrite existing index.html.

After modifying data.yaml, run python3 yaml_2_js.py. It will update the data.js file.

TODO

• Check and add the information to make the table useful. I would appreciate adding a missing demo.

• Improve the python code.

• get_gh_data.py: retry to get the api data if response contains "message": "Server Error".

• Show column descriptions on mouse over.

• Where do I find a number of opened and closed issues? For example, https://api.github.com/users/posativ/isso has open_issues_count and open_issues, both equal to 131, whereas there are 110 issues and 21 PR.

• apigh/<date> folders store a lot of information which is never used. Need to extract only needed info from the files and remove the rest.

• Plot stars vs. time for several top commenting systems. Update the plot daily automatically.

• Get rid of yaml, convert data.yaml to data.json

Contribution

Contributions are welcome. Fork the repo and send PR, submit an issue, or leave a comment at the website.