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Get Account Comments

How to retrieve account comments from the Hive blockchain.

Full, runnable src of Get Account Comments can be downloaded as part of: tutorials/ruby (or download just this tutorial: devportal-master-tutorials-ruby-09_get_account_comments.zip).

Historically, applications that wanted to retrieve comments written by a particular account would use get_state. But this method has been scheduled for deprecation. So we’ll use a more supported approach in this tutorial using get_account_history.

Also see:

Sections

  1. Making the api call - Requesting account history
    1. Example api call - make the call in code
    2. Example api call using script - using our tutorial script
    3. Example Output - output from a successful call
  2. Comment Fields - Getting more detail than provided by account history.
  3. To Run - Running the example.

Making the api call

get_account_comments.rb

To request the latest comments by a particular author, we can use the get_account_history method:

api = Radiator::Api.new

options = []
options << account_name
options << -1 # start
options << 1000 # limit

# This is optional, we can mask out all operations other than comment_operation.
operation_mask = 0x02 # comment_operation
options << (operation_mask & 0xFFFFFFFF) # operation_filter_low
options << ((operation_mask & 0xFFFFFFFF00000000) >> 32) # operation_filter_high

api.get_account_history(*options) do |history|
  history.each do |index, item|
    type, op = item.op
    
    next unless type == 'comment'
    next if op.parent_author.empty? # skip posts
    next if op.parent_author == account_name # skip replies to account

    # .
    # ... your code here
    # .
  end
end

Notice, the above example request up to 1,000 operations from history, starting from the oldest. From these results, we iterate on each item in history to locate a) type of comment, and b) parent_author that do not match the account_name.

This example also shows how to mask out all but comment_operation. This is optional, but by providing this mask, the api response will only include posts and replies, reducing the bandwidth required to execute this api call.

Example api call

If we want to get the comments by user @lordvader …

api.get_account_history("lordvader") do |content| ...

Example api call using script

And to do the same with our tutorial script

ruby get_account_comments.rb lordvader

Example Output

From the example we get the following output from our script:

.
.
.
Reply to @darkunicorn in discussion: "5 EASY WAYS TO MAKE A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SMILE TO YOU."
	body_length: 89 (19 words)
	replied at: 2016-07-28T22:07:06
	net_votes: 0
	https://hive.blog/@lordvader/re-darkunicorn-5-easy-ways-to-make-a-beautiful-woman-smile-to-you-20160728t220708749z
Reply to @michaellamden68 in discussion: "Black Knight Satellite-What's Your Opinion?"
	body_length: 88 (16 words)
	replied at: 2016-07-28T22:10:09
	net_votes: 2
	https://hive.blog/@lordvader/re-michaellamden68-black-knight-satellite-what-s-your-opinion-20160728t221010607z
Reply to @teamsteem in discussion: "I’ve invited my 708 Facebook friends to join Steemit (updated I invited 0 friends thanks to Facebook)"
	body_length: 112 (22 words)
	replied at: 2016-07-28T22:03:18, updated at: 2016-07-28T22:12:42, active at: 2016-07-28T22:12:42
	net_votes: 0
	https://hive.blog/@lordvader/re-teamsteem-i-ve-invited-my-708-facebook-friends-to-join-steemit-20160728t220318695z

Comment fields

Comments in the results of get_account_history will only return the following fields:

In our example script, we want more detail than this, so for every comment, we call get_content to retrieve more detail. For a full explanation of the results provided by get_content, please refer to the tutorial: Get Post Details

Final code:

require 'rubygems'
require 'bundler/setup'

Bundler.require

account_name = ARGV[0]
api = Radiator::Api.new

options = []
options << account_name
options << -1 # start
options << 1000 # limit

# This is optional, we can mask out all operations other than comment_operation.
operation_mask = 0x02 # comment_operation
options << (operation_mask & 0xFFFFFFFF) # operation_filter_low
options << ((operation_mask & 0xFFFFFFFF00000000) >> 32) # operation_filter_high

api.get_account_history(*options) do |history|
  history.each do |index, item|
    type, op = item.op
    
    next unless type == 'comment'
    next if op.parent_author.empty? # skip posts
    next if op.parent_author == account_name # skip replies to account
    
    url = "https://hive.blog/@#{op.author}/#{op.permlink}"
    api.get_content(op.author, op.permlink) do |reply|
      puts "Reply to @#{op.parent_author} in discussion: \"#{reply.root_title}\""
      
      puts "\tbody_length: #{reply.body.size} (#{reply.body.split(/\W+/).size} words)"
      
      # The date and time this reply was created.
      print "\treplied at: #{reply.created}"
      
      if reply.last_update != reply.created
        # The date and time of the last update to this reply.
        print ", updated at: #{reply.last_update}"
      end
      
      if reply.last_update != reply.created
        # The last time this reply was "touched" by voting or reply.
        print ", active at: #{reply.active}"
      end
      
      print "\n"
      
      # Net positive votes
      puts "\tnet_votes: #{reply.net_votes}"
      
      # Link directly to reply.
      puts "\t#{url}"
    end
  end
end

To Run

First, set up your workstation using the steps provided in Getting Started. Then you can create and execute the script (or clone from this repository):

git clone https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/devportal.git
cd devportal/tutorials/ruby/09_get_account_comments
bundle install
ruby get_account_comments.rb <account-name>
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