Upgrading from Django’s previous comment system

Prior versions of Django included an outdated, undocumented comment system. Users who reverse-engineered this framework will need to upgrade to use the new comment system; this guide explains how.

The main changes from the old system are:

  • This new system is documented.

  • It uses modern Django features like forms and modelforms.

  • It has a single Comment model instead of separate FreeComment and Comment models.

  • Comments have “email” and “URL” fields.

  • No ratings, photos and karma. This should only effect World Online.

  • The {% comment_form %} tag no longer exists. Instead, there’s now two functions: {% get_comment_form %}, which returns a form for posting a new comment, and {% render_comment_form %}, which renders said form using the comments/form.html template.

  • The way comments are include in your URLconf have changed; you’ll need to replace:

    (r'^comments/', include('django.contrib.comments.urls.comments')),

    with:

    (r'^comments/', include('django.contrib.comments.urls')),

Upgrading data

The data models for Django's comment system have changed, as have the table names. Before you transfer your existing data into the new comments system, make sure that you have installed the new comments system as explained in the quick start guide. This will ensure that the new tables have been properly created.

To transfer your data into the new comments system, you'll need to directly run the following SQL:

BEGIN;

INSERT INTO django_comments
    (content_type_id, object_pk, site_id, user_name, user_email, user_url,
    comment, submit_date, ip_address, is_public, is_removed)
SELECT
    content_type_id, object_id, site_id, person_name, '', '', comment,
    submit_date, ip_address, is_public, not approved
FROM comments_freecomment;

INSERT INTO django_comments
    (content_type_id, object_pk, site_id, user_id, user_name, user_email,
    user_url, comment, submit_date, ip_address, is_public, is_removed)
SELECT
    content_type_id, object_id, site_id, user_id, '', '', '', comment,
    submit_date, ip_address, is_public, is_removed
FROM comments_comment;

UPDATE django_comments SET user_name = (
    SELECT username FROM auth_user
    WHERE django_comments.user_id = auth_user.id
) WHERE django_comments.user_id is not NULL;
UPDATE django_comments SET user_email = (
    SELECT email FROM auth_user
    WHERE django_comments.user_id = auth_user.id
) WHERE django_comments.user_id is not NULL;

COMMIT;
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