README
React MetaTags Hook
React hook to manage HTML meta tags.
Supported Tags
title
description
charset
lang
on the html tag- Any
<meta>
and<link>
- Convenient way to set
og:*
andtwitter:*
meta tags
Features
- Dependencies array, to better control the update of meta tags
- When a component is unmounted, its meta tags are removed
- When possible, existing tags are updated rather then re-created (even if created in different components)
- DOM changes are debounced to avoid pointless consecutive updates
- When used in sibling or nested components, meta tags are merged: last rendered components (i.e. the inner ones) overrides common meta tags.
- Supports static HTML generation for Server Side Rendering
- Typescript declarations
Install
npm install react-metatags-hook
or
yarn add react-metatags-hook
Example
import useMetaTags from 'react-metatags-hook'
const Component = ({
match,
}) => {
const {
params: { id },
url,
} = match
useMetaTags({
title: `Page Title`,
description: `An interesting page description with id: ${id}`,
charset: 'utf8',
lang: 'en',
metas: [
{ name: 'keywords', content: 'a, list, of, keywords' },
{ name: 'robots', content: 'index, follow' },
{ name: 'DC.Title', content: 'Dublin Core Title' },
{ name: 'url', content: `http://yourwebsite.com${url}` },
{ property: 'fb:app_id', content: '1234567890' },
{ 'http-equiv': 'Cache-Control', content: 'no-cache' },
],
links: [
{ rel: 'canonical', href: 'http://yourwebsite.com' },
{ rel: 'icon', type: 'image/ico', href: '/favicon.ico' },
{ rel: 'apple-touch-icon', sizes: '72x72', type: 'image/png', href: '/apple-72.png' },
],
openGraph: {
title: 'Page Title',
image: 'http://yourwebsite.com/ogimage.jpg',
'site_name': 'My Site'
},
twitter: {
card: 'summary',
creator: '@you',
title: 'Page Title',
}
}, [id, url])
return (
<>
...
</>
)
}
Usage
useMetaTags(config: MetaTagsConfig, dependencies?: any[])
MetaTagsConfig
interface MetaTagsConfig {
title?: string
description?: string
lang?: string
charset?: string
metas?: MetaTag[]
links?: LinkTag[]
openGraph?: {
[key: string]: string,
}
twitter?: {
[key: string]: string,
}
}
The config object accepts the following options:
title
Sets the <title>
tag
description
Sets the <meta name="description" />
tag (convenient way, same as using metas
)
lang
Sets <html>
tag lang attribute
description
Sets the <meta charset="" />
tag (convenient way, same as using metas
)
metas
interface MetaTag {
name?: string
property?: string
'http-equiv'?: string
content?: string
[attributeKey: string]: string
}
An array of object that represents the <meta />
tags
links
interface LinkTag {
rel?: string
href?: string
size?: string
type?: string
media?: string
[attributeKey: string]: string
}
An array of object that represents the <link />
tags
openGraph
A convenient method to set <meta property="og:*" />
meta tags. Accepts an object where the key is appended in the property
attribute after the og:
prefix, and the value is the content
attribute of the meta.
twitter
A convenient method to set <meta property="twitter:*" />
meta tags. Accepts an object where the key is appended in the property
attribute after the twitter:
prefix, and the value is the content
attribute of the meta.
What happens when used in multiple component or one component is unmounted
Nested and Sibling components
When used in nested components, metas defined in the children are merged with the ones defined in the parents. If the same meta are defined in both the parent and the children, children ones take precedence and overwrite parents ones. (see Tags creation and update for more details)
The same logic applies if used in sibling components: the last to render is the one that take precedence if same meta are defined.
Component unmount
When a component that uses this hook is unmounted, its metas definition are removed from a global list of metas and the metas definition is recalculated based on the definitions in other components. If some meta is not longer present in this resulting definition, the meta tag is removed from the DOM.
Tags creation and update
As just described, this library allows to overwrite tags in nested components, and updates existing tags if possible rather the creating new one.
To do so, it has to identify when two tag definitions refers to the same tag (i.e. you want to change the <link rel='icon'/>
when a component is mounted).
To identify when tags are unique, the following attributes are considered, and every time at least one of them is different, a new tag in the head is created.
Any Tag
id
<meta />
name
property
http-equiv
charset
<link />
rel
sizes
If this logic is unsatisfactory, please let me know and I'll be happy to improve it.
Server Side Rendering
This library exports the function generateStaticHtml
that can be used to generate an HTML string of the meta tags created by this hook. Use it after ReactDOMServer.renderToString
or ReactDOMServer.renderToStaticMarkup
.
import { generateStaticHtml } from 'react-metatags-hook'
ReactDOMServer.renderToString(<App />)
const metaHTML = generateStaticHtml()
Is important to point out that the meta tags definitions are stored inside the library instance. This means that when different components are rendered into string in the same application instance (i.e. node server), the meta tags of the second render will add up to the definitions generated by the first render.
If this behavior is not the desired one, you can reset the meta tags definitions stored in the library instance using the resetMetaTags
function.
import { generateStaticHtml, resetMetaTags } from 'react-metatags-hook'
ReactDOMServer.renderToString(<App />)
const metaHTML = generateStaticHtml()
resetMetaTags()
ReactDOMServer.renderToString(<AnotherApp />)
const anotherMetaHTML = generateStaticHtml()