Add comments count endpoint

[typeofweb]

A custom API route for getting comment count. Useful for more advanced use-cases such as fetching & displaying the number of comments below each blogpost.

Obviously, this is just a draft because there's plenty of repetitive code to pages/api/discussions/index.ts.

Fixes #145

[vercel]

@mmiszy is attempting to deploy a commit to the giscus Team on Vercel.

A member of the Team first needs to authorize it.

[laymonage]

Hey, thanks for the PR.

However, before you continue working on this, I want to give a heads-up: I might not merge this. The reason is, well... this API would basically just be a proxy to GitHub's API. I'm trying to keep such endpoints to a minimum, to minimize the chance of giscus getting rate limited (it has happened before, see #188), or exceeding my Vercel monthly limits.

I mean, if GitHub provides a way to access the API without authentication (like the REST API), I would never even have pages/api/discussions/index.ts in the first place (at least the GET handler).

I do acknowledge that this endpoint could be useful, especially because the GraphQL API isn't very friendly. Maybe we could host such APIs separately (e.g. on Cloudflare Workers), or make this opt-in for those who self-host giscus...

[typeofweb]

Yes, I understand the issue. I think the solution might be to only enable it for self-hosted instances or (in the future) for paid accounts?

[laymonage]

Yes, I understand the issue. I think the solution might be to only enable it for self-hosted instances

Yup, likely through an environment variable that's enabled/disabled by default (I don't mind which one), so I can configure it from my Vercel dashboard.

Next.js does not have a built-in functionality to exclude certain pages from the production build, though. We probably have to do it manually, for example with the following variables:

ADDITIONAL_PAGES=api/discussions/comments-count.tsx,api/some-other-api.ts
ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_PAGES=false

And then, write something in the build script so that if ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_PAGES is false, all the files specified in ADDITIONAL_PAGES will be removed before the build.

or (in the future) for paid accounts?

I'm planning to keep it free for all users.

[AntoineSoetewey]

I'm planning to keep it free for all users.

Thanks!!

[typeofweb]

I don't see a way to do that currently

ADDITIONAL_PAGES=api/discussions/comments-count.tsx,api/some-other-api.ts
ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_PAGES=false

However, it would be trivial to add an if (!process.env.ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_PAGES) { return res.status(404).end(); }

[laymonage]

However, it would be trivial to add an if (!process.env.ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_PAGES) { return res.status(404).end(); }

Yeah, but that would still create the page and its serverless functions though? 🤔

Vercel might cache it, but I don't know for sure.

[typeofweb]

Yes, it will create the endpoint. Is that a problem @laymonage ?

[laymonage]

@mmiszy I don't know how Vercel deals with it, but theoretically we will still deploy the page and the function will still be called every time someone hits the endpoint. The function would instantly finish, but if Vercel doesn't cache the response and counts it towards the usage, it can add up.

[laymonage]

This might be useful: https://nextjs.org/docs/api-reference/next.config.js/custom-page-extensions

We can rename existing pages to have .page.tsx extension and name these optional pages with an extension such as .page.opt.tsx and add page.opt.tsx to the pageExtensions config based on process.env.ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_PAGES.