sharon

A lightweight and modular social sharing library:

• a toolkit to build your own share buttons;
• supports 13 sharing platforms;
• gzipped size is 1.72 KB;
• you can cherry-pick which sharing platforms to use to make it even smaller.

Here how it looks when you want Sharon to open a tweet popup:

sharon.twitter({
  title: "One last quarter as defending champs!",
  hashtags: ["SuperBowl", "DenverBroncos"],
});

Or to get a Facebook share count for your page:

sharon.facebook.count((err, count) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log("Whoa, we have " + count + " shares!");
});

Table of contents

• Setup
  • CommonJS
  • Browser
• API
  • Supported sharing platforms
  • sharon.platform(url = location.href, parameters = { title: document.title })
  • sharon.platform.href(url = location.href, parameters = { title: document.title })
  • sharon.platform.count(url = location.href, callback)
  • Share parameters
• More examples
  • Poor man's tweet button
  • React component
  • AngularJS

Setup

CommonJS

Install Sharon using npm:

npm install sharon --save

Load the whole library:

import sharon from "sharon";

Or cherry-pick platforms for smaller Webpack, Rollup, or Browserify bundles:

import facebook from "sharon/facebook";
import twitter from "sharon/twitter";

Browser

<script src="dist/sharon.js"></script>

For the sharon.js file, check the dist directory of the installed module or directly download it:

• Production version – 1.72 KB, minified and gzipped
• Source map

API

Supported sharing platforms

Each sharing platform has its endpoint under the Sharon API:

Sharing platform	Endpoint	Share count support	Share parameters
Buffer	sharon.buffer	Yes	Reference
Facebook	sharon.facebook	Yes
Gmail	sharon.gmail
LinkedIn	sharon.linkedin		Reference
Odnoklassniki	sharon.ok	Yes
Pinterest	sharon.pinterest	Yes	Reference
Reddit	sharon.reddit	Yes	Reference
Telegram	sharon.telegram
Tumblr	sharon.tumblr	Yes	Reference
Twitter	sharon.twitter		Reference
Vkontakte	sharon.vk	Yes	Reference
Weibo	sharon.weibo
XING	sharon.xing		Reference

This table also shows which platforms support retrieving share counts and links to the share parameters references.

sharon.platform(url = location.href, parameters = { title: document.title })

• url <String> The URL to share. Defaults to the current location.
• parameters <Object> Share parameters. Default to an object with the title property equal to the current page title.

Opens a share popup.

Examples

Share the current page:

sharon.twitter();

With a custom title:

sharon.twitter({ title: "Check it out" });

Share example.com:

sharon.twitter("http://example.com");

Share example.com with a custom title:

sharon.twitter("http://example.com", { title: "Check it out" });

sharon.platform.href(url = location.href, parameters = { title: document.title })

• url <String> The URL to share. Defaults to the current location.
• parameters <Object> Share parameters. Default to an object with the title property equal to the current page title.
• Returns: <String>

Returns a share popup URL.

Examples

Get the share popup URL for the current page:

const link = sharon.twitter.href();

With a custom title:

const link = sharon.twitter.href({ title: "Check it out" });

For example.com:

const link = sharon.twitter.href("http://example.com");

For example.com with a custom title:

const link = sharon.twitter.href("http://example.com", {
  title: "Check it out",
});

sharon.platform.count(url = location.href, callback)

• url <String> The URL of which to retrive the share count. Defaults to the current location.
• callback <Function(err, count)> A callback function that receives the count.

Retrieves the share count of a URL.

Examples

Share count for the current page:

sharon.facebook.count((err, count) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(count);
});

For example.com:

sharon.facebook.count("http://example.com", (err, count) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(count);
});

Share parameters

When using sharon.platform or sharon.platform.href functions you can specify the share parameters by passing an object as the last argument. They are added to the query parameters of the share popup URL and are specifying additional features:

sharon.twitter({
  title: "One last quarter as defending champs!",
  hashtags: ["SuperBowl", "DenverBroncos"],
});

This produces a popup with a predefined title and hashtags:

The set of features is different for most of the sharing platforms. To find them out, check their documentation, links provided in the Supported sharing platforms table.

There is an inconsistency between different platforms: for instance, Twitter expects the text parameter to contain a link title, while Pinterest expects the description one. Sharon normalizes this behavior: when you pass a title parameter, it is automatically translated into one corresponding to a chosen platform.

More examples

Poor man's tweet button

<button type="button" onclick="sharon.twitter()">Tweet</button>

React component

function LinkedInShareButton {
  const [count, setCount] = useState();

  useEffect(() => {
    sharon.linkedin.count((err, count) => {
      if (err) throw err;
      setCount(count);
    });
  }, []);

  const share = useCallback((event) => {
    event.preventDefault();
    sharon.linkedin();
  }, []);

  return (
    <a onClick={share} href={sharon.linkedin.href()}>
      Share on LinkedIn {count}
    </a>
  );
}

AngularJS

<a ng-click="share($event)" ng-href="{{href}}">Share on Facebook {{count}}</a>

$scope.href = sharon.facebook.href();

$scope.share = (event) => {
  event.preventDefault();
  sharon.facebook();
};

sharon.facebook.count((err, count) => {
  if (err) throw err;

  $scope.$apply(() => {
    $scope.count = count;
  });
});