does --write-comments need to be set for comments to be available in getComments()?

[9x3l6]

Not sure where else the code needs to be updated in order to make it so when calling getComments() it actually returns the comments instead of an empty array.

// ...
private bool $writeComments = false;
// ...
/**
 * Write video comments inside .info.json file.
 */
public function writeComments(bool $writeComments): self
{
    $new = clone $this;
    $new->writeComments = $writeComments;

    return $new;
}
// ...
'write-comments' => $this->writeComments,

[9x3l6]

With the current way it is the comments are showing up as empty objects in the database during my tests. comment_count returns 6 and comments shows like below... Note this is from a youtube video, I have yet to check other platforms, and will update this when I can.

[{},{},{},{},{},{}]

To get around this issue with the empty objects, I am trying this for the moment. How sure how it effects performance though, time will tell. Also on a side note I noticed that the .info.json file is missing from the downloadPath but that's alright, since I can $video->toJson(), so long as the video and thumbnail are in the downloadPath I'm happy. In the future I'll check to make sure any subtitle files are also there, that'll have to wait.

try {
    $json = $video->toJson();
    $json = json_decode($json);
    $comments = $json->comments;
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    $comments = [];
}

I'm seeing these fields in the info.json file with I use the --write-comments argument with yt-dlp. Sometimes there is a like_count present and sometimes there isn't. I hope this helps. I could use all of those values. Thank you for working on this.

{
    "id": "string",
    "text": "string",
    "like_count": 2,
    "author_id": "string",
    "author": "string",   
    "author_thumbnail": "string",
    "parent": "string",                                  
    "_time_text": "string",
    "timestamp": 1672012800,
    "author_url": "string",
    "author_is_uploader": false,
    "is_favorited": false
}

Here is the code below to add the fields that aren't already in the code.

src/Entity/Comment.php

    public function getAuthorUrl(): ?string {
        return $this->get('author_url');
    }

    public function getAuthorIsUploader(): ?bool {
        return $this->get('author_is_uploader');
    }

    public function getAuthorThumbnail(): ?string {
        return $this->get('author_thumbnail');
    }

    public function getLikeCount(): ?int {
        return $this->get('like_count');
    }

    public function getIsFavorited(): ?bool {
        return $this->get('is_favorited');
    }

    public function getTimeText(): ?string {
        return $this->get('_time_text');
    }

[norkunas]

Like the Video entity, Comment also has direct access to any undefined properties through ->get('key') method. IIRC I've added only subset of getters that are most common in all providers, but if you want to contribute this also, I'm ok with it

[norkunas]

With the current way it is the comments are showing up as empty objects in the database during my tests.

That's expected if you use json_encode on objects when they don't implement JsonSerializable interface.
If you really need this, contribution welcome :)

[norkunas]

But you could also just use ->toArray() and all Comment data will be exposed to encode for database