Determine BlogEngine.NET comments that haven't been published

• December 6, 2009
• James Skemp
• tutorials / guides

Unfortunately, BlogEngine.NET doesn't currently have a very good way to determine, at a glance, all of the comments that haven't been approved. While this will certainly be coming in a future release, or as an extension, I figured writing something simple to do this would be a good LINQ to XML test for me.

You can download the built executable, or play with the code, which is included below.

Download the executable (7-Zip format). Requires .NET Framework 3.5.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Xml.Linq;
namespace TestBlogEngine {
public partial class Form1 : Form {
public Form1() {
InitializeComponent();
}
	private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
		OpenFileDialog sampleFile = new OpenFileDialog();
		sampleFile.Filter = "xml files (*.xml)|*.xml|All files (*.*)|*.*";

		if (sampleFile.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK) {
			textBox1.Text = sampleFile.FileName;

			string postsDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(sampleFile.FileName);
			sampleFile.Dispose();

			string[] postFiles = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(postsDirectory);

			DataTable comments = new DataTable();
			comments.Columns.Add("Post");
			comments.Columns.Add("CommentApproved");
			comments.Columns.Add("FileId");

			XDocument postXml;

			foreach (string postFile in postFiles) {
				postXml = XDocument.Load(postFile);

				var posts = from postData in postXml.Descendants("post")
					select new {
						Title = postData.Element("title").Value,
						CommentItems = (from commentItems in postData.Element("comments").Elements("comment")
							select commentItems).ToList()
					};

				foreach (var post in posts) {
					if (post.CommentItems.Count > 0) {
						foreach (var commentItem in post.CommentItems) {
							if (commentItem.Attribute("approved") != null && commentItem.Attribute("approved").Value == "False") {
								DataRow comment = comments.NewRow();
								comment["Post"] = post.Title;
								comment["CommentApproved"] = commentItem.Attribute("approved").Value;
								comment["FileId"] = "/post.aspx?id=" + System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(postFile);
								comments.Rows.Add(comment);
							}
						}

					}
				}
			}

			postXml = null;

			dataGridView1.DataSource = comments;

		}
	}
}

}

EDIT: Scott Guthrie's excellent Using LINQ to XML (and how to build a custom RSS Feed Reader with it) is the article that I keep going back to when I forget LINQ to XML basics.

• blogengine.net
• c#
• linq to xml
• xml