Altering the comment_form from comment-template.php

Howdy –

I have found tons of topics on how to add and alter fields in the comment form but I am having a hard time finding any help on altering other parts of the comment_form.

I want to add an <a href=""> and a class “show_hide” to the “Leave a reply” title (#reply-title), and enclose the rest of the comment form in a div with the class of “slidingDiv”. The effect is to allow the user to toggle the comment form by clicking on “Leave a reply” per this jquery tutorial: https://papermashup.com/simple-jquery-showhide-div/.

I was able to create the effect successfully by adding these elements to the comment_form portion of the wp-includes/comment-template.php file, but of course I DO NOT want to touch that file, so I am trying to figure out how to make this happen through my theme.

Here is the successful alteration to the code in /wp-includes/comment-template.php starting with line 1557 where i started my edits, and ending on line 1584 where I closed the div:

<h3 id="reply-title"><a href="#" class="show_hide"><?php comment_form_title( $args['title_reply'], $args['title_reply_to'] ); ?></a> <small><?php cancel_comment_reply_link( $args['cancel_reply_link'] ); ?></small></h3>
				<?php if ( get_option( 'comment_registration' ) && !is_user_logged_in() ) : ?>
					<?php echo $args['must_log_in']; ?>
					<?php do_action( 'comment_form_must_log_in_after' ); ?>
				<?php else : ?>
					<div class="slidingDiv"><form action="<?php echo site_url( '/wp-comments-post.php' ); ?>" method="post" id="<?php echo esc_attr( $args['id_form'] ); ?>">
						<?php do_action( 'comment_form_top' ); ?>
						<?php if ( is_user_logged_in() ) : ?>
							<?php echo apply_filters( 'comment_form_logged_in', $args['logged_in_as'], $commenter, $user_identity ); ?>
							<?php do_action( 'comment_form_logged_in_after', $commenter, $user_identity ); ?>
						<?php else : ?>
							<?php echo $args['comment_notes_before']; ?>
							<?php
							do_action( 'comment_form_before_fields' );
							foreach ( (array) $args['fields'] as $name => $field ) {
								echo apply_filters( "comment_form_field_{$name}", $field ) . "\n";
							}
							do_action( 'comment_form_after_fields' );
							?>
						<?php endif; ?>
						<?php echo apply_filters( 'comment_form_field_comment', $args['comment_field'] ); ?>
						<?php echo $args['comment_notes_after']; ?>
						<p class="form-submit">
							<input name="submit" type="submit" id="<?php echo esc_attr( $args['id_submit'] ); ?>" value="<?php echo esc_attr( $args['label_submit'] ); ?>" />
							<?php comment_id_fields( $post_id ); ?>
						</p>
						<?php do_action( 'comment_form', $post_id ); ?>
					</form></div>

What I added was <a href="#" class="show_hide"> to #reply-title and <div class="slidingDiv"> around the form.

So I have been trying to just include this alteration in a function and call up that function in my theme’s comments.php file, which usually uses the <?php comment_form(); ?>
– but I am not a .php wiz, and can’t seem to figure it out.

Here is a link to the test site, thought it won’t do much good, this is more of a concept to address, not really a problem that is on the site: https://www.jeannenemcek.com/beta/test-post-10/

Any help is greatly appreciated!
-Mattron