Understanding comments.getJournalEntry()

[JPing]

Hello Developers, 

When using the <task>.comments.getJournalEntry(1) function this would return the last comment entry in a record. It appears that what is returned is a string in the format "<date> - <users> (Comments) <comment>". Because this is just a string and I somewhat know the format, I can use some sting functions to pull out the section I want. My question is there a built in function already where I can just get the <comment> portion.

I ask this because the activity.xml formatter is able to separate these sections and display them in the nice activity logs that you see on a record. With the user (with picture) in the top left, the date and type in the right and the comments below. I don't know if any one has any insight on the activity.xml file, but I feel like understanding that file will help me parse comment better. 

Thanks in advance. 

[Brad Bowman · Accepted solution]

Conveniently, there is a newline character embedded in the string, so if you split on that or do some voodoo like this, (example from a Business Rule, but you can do a GlideRecord or whatever to retrieve them also...) you'll end up with just the comment

var cmt = current.comments.getJournalEntry(-1);
var regex= new RegExp('\n');
var a = cmt.search(regex);
cmt = cmt.substring(a+1, cmt.length);

[RikV]

Hi JPing,

I am not sure what exactly is the use case, but to have more, and easier, control over comment(s) within a record i would suggest querying the sys_journal_field or sys_audit table. 

If you just want the comments and/or work_notes attached to a record, the sys_journal_field table would be sufficient. If you are planning to create some kind of activity timeline, i would suggest the sys_audit table as it also keeps track of non-journal field updates and works almost in a similair fashion. 

Example using sys_journal_field table:

(function () {
    var recordSysId = 'YOUR_RECORD_SYS_ID_HERE';

    var commentGr = new GlideRecord('sys_journal_field');
    commentGr.addQuery('element_id', recordSysId); 
    commentGr.addQuery('element', 'comments'); // Only fetch comments (can also do work_notes)
    commentGr.query();

    var allComments = []
    while (commentGr.next()) {
        var comment = {
            author: commentGr.sys_created_by.getDisplayValue(),
            comment: commentGr.value,
            created: commentGr.sys_created_on.getDisplayValue(),
        }
        allComments.push(comment);
    }
})();