✨Role "Commenter" on Docs

[AntoLC]

Feature Request

Adding the role commenter brings some challenges because a commenter does not have the editing abilities but can create a thread and to create a thread, we need to add a "mark" on the document, meaning editing the document.

In simple:

• commenter cannot edit
• commenter can create a thread
• create thread needs editing

Possible solution

Add the "mark" backend side

What Blocknote do in their REST example.

They made a setter to add a mark to a document, backend nodejs side: https://github.com/TypeCellOS/BlockNote-demo-nextjs-hocuspocus/blob/main/hocuspocus-server/src/setMark.ts

They setup a nodejs server with some routes to interact with the document backend side, the route that interest us is /:threadId/addToDocument, it is this one setting the mark:
https://github.com/TypeCellOS/BlockNote-demo-nextjs-hocuspocus/blob/main/hocuspocus-server/src/threads.ts#L85-L98
Frontend side, when they create a thread, they call addThreadToDocument: https://github.com/TypeCellOS/BlockNote/blob/main/packages/core/src/comments/extension.ts#L337-L340
It will then call this route backend side that will add the mark:
https://github.com/TypeCellOS/BlockNote/blob/main/packages/core/src/comments/threadstore/yjs/RESTYjsThreadStore.ts#L61

---

How can we replicate that

As Blocknote is doing we will send the necessary informations to the routes POST threads:

docs/src/frontend/apps/impress/src/features/docs/doc-editor/components/comments/DocsThreadStore.tsx

Lines 202 to 215 in 54fe70d

	public createThread = async (options: {
	initialComment: {
	body: CommentBody;
	metadata?: unknown;
	};
	metadata?: unknown;
	}) => {
	const response = await fetchAPI(`documents/${this.docId}/threads/`, {
	method: 'POST',
	body: JSON.stringify({
	body: options.initialComment.body,
	}),
	});

If the user has the right (at least "commenter"), the backend will call the collaboration server to add a mark to the document:

docs/src/backend/core/api/viewsets.py

Lines 2192 to 2203 in 54fe70d

	def perform_create(self, serializer):
	"""Create the first comment of the thread."""
	body = serializer.validated_data["body"]
	del serializer.validated_data["body"]
	thread = serializer.save()
	models.Comment.objects.create(
	thread=thread,
	user=self.request.user if self.request.user.is_authenticated else None,
	body=body,
	)

To do so, we will have to implement a new route setMark as here, setMark would be expose only to the Django backend:

docs/src/frontend/servers/y-provider/src/servers/appServer.ts

Lines 45 to 50 in 54fe70d

	app.get(
	routes.COLLABORATION_GET_CONNECTIONS,
	httpSecurity,
	getDocumentConnectionInfoHandler,
	);

Thanks to the collaboration server, the mark should appear instantly to the client when it is set.