Sticky comment forms for sNews

One thing that's been nagging me since the first time I used sNews was the lack of sticky forms for your readers. Sticky forms are basically a way to remember a user's name and url when commenting. Constantly typing in their name and url can get to be a pain in the rear for your regulars.

I prefer to let my readers choose whether or not to remember their info. We do this via a form option, typically a checkbox with a label such as "Remember me".

So today I whipped up this little mod to allow your sNews commenters such an option. When the option is checked and a comment submitted, this will take the name and url and encode it (to avoid storing the emails in plain text) and set it as cookie, then when the user is presented with a comment form, the cookie will be decoded and the name & url field will be automatically populated for them.

This is an easy mod to implement, I'm only showing how to do the name & url for this, as that is the standard for a stock sNews install, if you have added other fields, such as an email field with my gravatar mod, and you're unable to figure out how to make the additional field(s) sticky, let me know and I'll try to assist you.

OK, let's get started, as always BACK-UP your snews.php file and work off of a copy. Now at the very beginning of the file, just after the opening <?php tag and license block, insert the code as shown below;

<?php
/********************************************************

    sNews 1.7 - November 2008
    Update 1.3
    Copyright (C) Solucija.com
    sNews is licensed under a Creative Commons License

*********************************************************/
// user has posted a comment and wants us to save his info
if (isset($_POST['text']) && isset($_POST['comment'])) { // comment has been posted
    if($_POST['remember_me'] == 'yes') { // yes, user wants to save his/her info
        $name = cleanXSS($_POST['name']);
        $url = cleanXSS($_POST['url']);
        $cookie = base64_encode($name.'|'.$url);
        $expire = time()+15552000; // 6 months
        $domain = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
        setcookie('cinfo',$cookie,$expire,'/',$domain,false);
    } else { // user doesn't want info saved, let's delete any previous cookie as well
        $cookie = '';
        $expire = time()-99999999;
        $domain = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
        setcookie('cinfo',$cookie,$expire,'/',$domain,false);
    }
}

That will handle setting the cookie before anything else. Now within the function comment, find the following block of code and insert the highlighted part;

// recall and set vars for reuse when botched post
if($_SESSION[_SITE.'comment']['fail'] == true) {
    $name = $_SESSION[_SITE.'comment']['name'];
    $comment = $_SESSION[_SITE.'comment']['comment'];
    $url = $_SESSION[_SITE.'comment']['url'];
    unset($_SESSION[_SITE.'comment']);
} elseif (isset($_COOKIE['cinfo'])){
    $comment_info = base64_decode($_COOKIE['cinfo']);
    $bits = explode('|',$comment_info);
    $name = cleanXSS($bits['0']);
    $url = cleanXSS($bits['1']);
    $remember_me = "ok";
} else {
	$url = $name = $comment = '';
}

That will handle populating the name & url fields with the cookie info, now just below that, add the following checkbox code;

echo html_input('text', 'url', 'url', $url, l('url'), 'text', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '')."\r\n";
echo html_input('checkbox', 'remember_me', 'remember_me', 'YES', l('comment_remember'), '', 'value="yes"', '', '', $remember_me, '', '', '', '', '')."\r\n";
echo html_input('textarea', 'text', 'text', stripslashes($comment), '* '.l('comment'), '', '', '', '', '', '5', '5', '', '', '')."\r\n";
echo mathCaptcha()."\r\n";

Now open your language file and add the following under the #comments section;

$l['comment_remember'] = 'Remember me';

That's it, upload your modified snews.php and language file and you should be all set. If you want to demo it, just look below.