metapatcher

metapatcher

HTML document head management library with convenient api. Manage social media tags, icons, device specific tags and event structured data with html meta tags and JSONLD documents. Supports both browser and server environments. Fully typed.

It injects head tags based on features you enabled upon start. The features are device, browser, platform specific. You give the data you have on page load and it injects appropriately.

• structuredData controls tags related to the Google Search Structured Data.
• openGraphTags controls Open Graph tags which many social media sites rely to fetch page data
• webAppManifest controls tags related to Web Application Manifest spec.
• twitterTags controls meta tags related to Twitter Cards
• msTags controls Microsoft device and browser specific tags including name, description and icons
• appleTags controls Apple device specific tags such as icons, name and style

Install

npm install metapatcher

Usage

Import

import { metapatcher } from 'metapatcher'
// or const { metapatcher } = require('metapatcher') for commonjs

or inject with script tag:

<script type="module" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/metapatcher@4/dist/index.js"></script>

Configure

All features mentioned above are enabled by default. You can disable some of them:

metapatcher.configure(['openGraphTags', 'structuredData', 'twitterTags', 'msTags', 'appleTags'], { idPrefix: 'metapatcher' })
// configure also does some injections so you gonna call it anyway
metapatcher.configure()

Basic, High Level Methods

You have to use at least the following methods to create satisfying frontends:

// all parameters are optional
metapatcher.setProjectDetails({
    favicon: '/path/favicon.ico',
    name: 'My Project',
    url: 'https://example.com',
    robots: 'noindex, nofollow', // or "all" for example
    logo: '/path/logo.png',
    themeColor: '#333333',
    twitterSite: '@twitter',
    safariPinnedTab: { href: '/path/mark.svg', color: '#333333' },
    // icons need to follow this naming: *-[width]x[height].ext
    icons: ['/path/icon-16x16.png', '/path/icon-512x512.png', '/path/icon-150x150.png']
})

All of the parameters above are optional and has their own individual methods such as setFavicon, setIcons or setName.

Consider also the following methods at the project level:

metapatcher.setMsApplicationConfig (param: string | MetapatcherMsApplicationConfigAttrs)
metapatcher.setAppleStatusBarStyle (content: 'default' | 'black' | 'black-translucent' = 'default')
metapatcher.addPreload (param: string | MetapatcherPreloadAttrs)
metapatcher.addPrefetch (param: string | MetapatcherPrefetchAttrs)
metapatcher.addPreconnect (param: string | MetapatcherPreconnectAttrs)
metapatcher.addDnsPrefetch (param: string | MetapatcherDnsPrefetchAttrs)

Use the following methods from page to page:

// all parameters are optional
metapatcher.setPageDetails({
    title: 'Page | Project Name',
    description: 'Lorem ipsum.',
    path: '/en-us/some/page',
    image: '/media/page-cover.jpg',
    // both xx_XX and xx-XX syntax are okay for locales
    locale: 'en_US',
    canonical: 'https://example.com/en-us/some/page',
    // both xx_XX and xx-XX syntax are okay for hreflang
    localVersions: [
        { hreflang: 'en-US', href: '/en-us/some/page' }, 
        { hreflang: 'tr-TR', href: '/tr-tr/some/page' }],
    breadcrumb: [
        { title: 'Page', url: '/en-us/some/page' },
        { title: 'Some', url: '/en-us/some' },
        { title: 'Home', url: '/en-us' }
    ]
})

All of the parameters above are optional and has their own individual methods such as setPageTitle or setBreadcrumb.

Consider also the following methods at the page level:

metapatcher.setMobileVariant (param: string | MetapatcherMobileVariantLinkAttrs)

It will inject appropriate meta tags, link tags, jsonld scripts for specific platforms and devices depending on the enabled features.

To set any other kind of meta tags:

metapatcher.setMeta('google', 'notranslate')

Server-side Usage

The library has a simple isDomAvailable property which get its value upon init by a simple check typeof document !== 'undefined'. This property decides if the library should inject tags or collect them in memory. So, when you run the library in a non-browser environment, they will be kept in memory. You can print them all with:

metapatcher.dump()

It returns:

<meta id="metapatcher-msapplication-config" name="msapplication-config" content="none">
<meta id="metapatcher-apple-mobile-web-app-capable" name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
<meta id="metapatcher-twitter-card" name="twitter:card" content="summary">
...

Low Level Usage, Custom Tags

There are methods that you can use to set custom meta tags, link tags and jsonld scripts without leaving the control of the library.

Set custom tags:

// all parameters are optional
metapatcher.set('meta', { id: 'my-id', name: 'viewport', content: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1, viewport-fit=cover' })

metapatcher.setJsonLd('my-script', { abc: 'def' })

and remove later if neccessary:

metapatcher.removeOne('link[id="my-id"]')
metapatcher.removeMany('link[hreflang]')

Inject Script and Stylesheet Resources

await metapatcher.setScript({ id: 'my-script', src: 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/metapatcher@4/dist/index.js', async: true })
// wait for global "metapatcher" to become available under window
await metapatcher.setScript({ id: 'my-script', src: 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/metapatcher@4/dist/index.js', async: true }, { waitForLoad: 'metapatcher' })

await metapatcher.setStylesheet({ id: 'my-style', href: 'https://example.com/style.css' })

Supports Boolean Attributes

Many methods takes a parameter to be used as html attrs and you can always provide a boolean value for any attribute to render it as boolean html element attribute:

metapatcher.set('link', { rel: 'manifest', href: '/app.webmanifest', crossorigin: true })

Contributing

If you're interested in contributing, read the CONTRIBUTING.md first, please.

Thanks for the attention 💙 Any amount of support on patreon or github will return you back as bug fixes, new features and bits and bytes.