Laravel Meta Tags

Easily render meta tags within your Laravel application, using a fluent API

Features

• Simple API
• Render named, property, raw, Twitter card and OpenGraph type meta tags
• Optionally, render default tags on every request
• Conditionally set tags
• Macroable
• There is no need to set meta titles for every controller method. The package can optionally guess titles based on uri segments or the current named route
• Well documented
• Tested, with 100% code coverage

Requirements

• PHP ^8.0
• Laravel ^8.12, ^9.0, ^10.0 or ^11.0

Legacy Support / Upgrading

For PHP <8.0 and Laravel <8.12 / support, use package version ^1.7.7

If upgrading from ^1.0, see UPGRADING for details.

Installation

composer require f9webltd/laravel-meta

The package will automatically register itself.

Optionally publish the configuration file by running:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="F9Web\Meta\MetaServiceProvider" --tag="config"

Documentation

This package aims to make adding common meta tags to your Laravel application a breeze.

Usage

Within a controller:

meta()
   ->set('title', 'Buy widgets today')
   ->set('canonical', '/users/name')
   ->set('description', 'My meta description')
   ->set('theme-color', '#fafafa')
   ->noIndex();

To output metadata add the following within a Blade layout file:

{!! meta()->toHtml() !!}

<title>Buy widgets today - Meta Title Append</title>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://site.co.uk/users/name" />
<meta name="description" content="My meta description">
<meta name="theme-color" content="#fafafa">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex nofollow">

Optionally, the Meta facade can be used as an alternative to meta() helper, generating the same output:

Meta::set('title', 'Buy widgets today')
   ->set('canonical', '/users/name')
   ->set('description', 'My meta description')
   ->set('theme-color', '#fafafa')
   ->noIndex();

Conditionally Setting Tags

The when() method can be used to conditionally set tags. A boolean condition (indicating if the closure should be executed) and a closure. The closure parameter is full instance of the meta class, meaning all methods are callable.

$noIndex = true;

meta()->when($noIndex, function ($meta) {
    $meta->noIndex();
});

The when() is fluent and can be called multiple times:

meta()
    ->set('title', 'the title')
    -when(true, fn ($meta) => $meta->set('og:description', 'og description'))
    -when(false, fn ($meta) => $meta->set('referrer', 'no-referrer-when-downgrade'))
    ->noIndex();

Blade Directives

Blade directives are available, as an alternative to using PHP function within templates.

To render all metadata:

@meta

Render a specific meta tag by name:

@meta('title')

Additional tag types

The package supports multiple tag types.

Property type tags

To create property type tags, append property: before the tag name.

meta()->set('property:fb:app_id', '1234567890');

<meta property="fb:app_id" content="1234567890">

Twitter card tags

To create twitter card tags, append twitter: before the tag name.

meta()->set('twitter:site', '@twitter_user');

<meta name="twitter:site" content="@twitter_user">

Open Graph tags

To create Open Graph (or Facebook) tags, append og: before the tag name:

meta()
   ->set('og:title', 'My new site')
   ->set('og:url', 'http://site.co.uk/posts/hello.html');

<meta property="og:title" content="My new site">
<meta property="og:url" content="http://site.co.uk/posts/hello.html">

Other tag types

To create other tag types, use the raw() method:

meta()
   ->setRawTag('<link rel="fluid-icon" href="https://gist.github.com/fluidicon.png" title="GitHub">')
   ->setRawTag('<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/opensearch-gist.xml" title="Gist">');

<link rel="fluid-icon" href="https://gist.github.com/fluidicon.png" title="GitHub">
<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/opensearch-gist.xml" title="Gist">

Default tags

It may be desirable to render static meta tags application wide. Optionally define common tags within f9web-laravel-meta.defaults.

For example, defining the below defaults

'defaults' => [
    'robots' => 'all',
    'referrer' => 'no-referrer-when-downgrade',
    '<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">',
],

will render the following on every page:

<meta name="robots" content="all">
<meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer-when-downgrade">
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">

Helper methods

get()

Fetch a specific tag value by name.

meta()->set('title', 'meta title');

meta()->get('title'); // meta title

null is returned for none existent tags.

render()

Render all defined tags. render() is called when rendering tags within Blade files.

The below calls are identical.

{!! meta()->toHtml() !!}
{!! meta()->render() !!}

Passing a tag title to render() will render that tag.

meta()->set('title', 'meta title');

meta()->render('title'); // <title>meta title</title>

fromArray()

Generate multiple tags from an array of tags.

meta()
   ->fromArray([
       'viewport' => 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0',
       'author' => 'John Joe',
       'og:title' => 'When Great Minds Dont Think Alike',
       'twitter:title' => 'Using Laravel 7',
   ]);

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<meta name="author" content="John Joe">
<meta property="og:title" content="When Great Minds Dont Think Alike">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Using Laravel 7">
<title>Users - Edit - Meta Title Append</title>

setRawTags()

Generate multiple raw tags from an array.

meta()
   ->setRawTags([
       '<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="New Releases - Packagist" href="https://packagist.org/feeds/releases.rss" />',
       '<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/search.osd?v=1588083369" title="Packagist" />',
       '<meta charset="UTF-8" />'
   ]);

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="New Releases - Packagist" href="https://packagist.org/feeds/releases.rss" />
<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/search.osd?v=1588083369" title="Packagist" />
<meta charset="UTF-8" />

tags()

Fetch all tags as an array.

meta()
   ->set('title', 'meta title')
   ->set('og:title', 'og title');

$tags = meta()->tags();

/*
[
   "title" => "meta title"
   "og:title" => "og title"
];
*/

purge()

Remove all previously set tags.

forget()

Remove a previously set tag by title.

meta()
   ->set('title', 'meta title')
   ->set('og:title', 'og title');

meta()->forget('title');

$tags = meta()->tags();

// ["og:title" => "og title"];

noIndex()

Generate the necessary tags to exclude the url from search engines.

meta()->noIndex();

<meta name="robots" content="noindex nofollow">

favIcon()

Generate the necessary tags for a basic favicon. The favicon path can be specified within the f9web-laravel-meta.favicon-path configuration value.

meta()->favIcon();

<meta name="shortcut icon" content="https://site.co.uk/favicon.ico">
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="https://site.co.uk/favicon.ico">

Dynamic Calls

For improved readability, it is possible to make dynamic method calls. The below codes blocks would render identical HTML:

meta()
    ->title('meta title')
    ->description('meta description')
    ->canonical('/users/me');

meta()
    ->set('title', 'meta title')
    ->set('description', 'meta description')
    ->set('canonical', '/users/me');

Macroable Support

The package implements Laravel's Macroable trait, meaning additional methods can be added the main Meta service class at run time. For example, [Laravel's collection class is macroable](For furtherinformatioin see the following samples ).

The noIndex and favIcon helpers are defined as macros within the package service provider.

Sample macro to set arbitrary defaults tags for SEO:

// within a service provider
Meta::macro('seoDefaults', function () {
    return Meta::favIcon()
        ->set('title', $title = 'Widgets, Best Widgets')
        ->set('og:title', $title)
        ->set('description', $description = 'Buy the best widgets from Acme Co.')
        ->set('og:description', $description)
        ->fromarray([
            'twitter:card' => 'summary',
            'twitter:site' => '@roballport',
        ]);
});

To call the newly defined macro:

meta()->seoDefaults();

Macros can also accept arguments.

Meta::macro('setPaginationTags', function (array $data) {
    $page = $data['page'] ?? 1;

    if ($page > 1) {
        Meta::setRawTag('<link rel="prev" href="' . $data['prev'] . '" />');
    }

    if (!empty($data['next'])) {
        return Meta::setRawTag('<link rel="next" href="' . $data['next'] . '" />');
    }

    return Meta::instance();
});

meta()->setPaginationTags([
    'page' => 7,
    'next' => '/users/page/8',
    'prev' => '/users/page/6',
]);

To allow for fluent method calls ensure the macro returns an instance of the class.

Special tags

Meta title

The package ensures a meta tag is always present. Omitting a title will force the package to guess one based upon the current named route or uri.

The set the preferred method, edit the f9web-laravel-meta.title-guessor.method configuration value.

uri method sample

• if the uri is /orders/create thr guessed title is "Orders - Create"
• if the uri is /orders/9999/edit thr guessed title is "Orders - 9999 - Edit"

route method sample

• current named route is users.create, guessed title 'Users - Create'
• current named route is users.index, guessed title 'Users'

This behaviour can be disabled via editing the f9web-laravel-meta.title-guessor.enabled configuration value.

This automatic resolution is useful in large applications, where it would be otherwise cumbersome to set metadata for every controller method.

Appending text to the meta title

Typically, common data such as the company name is appended to meta titles.

The f9web-laravel-meta.meta-title-append configuration value can be set to append the given string automatically to every meta title.

To disable this behaviour set f9web-laravel-meta.meta-title-append to null.

Limiting the meta title length

For SEO reasons, the meta title length should be restricted. This package, by default, limits the title to 60 characters.

To change this behaviour update the configuration value of f9web-laravel-meta.title-limit. Set to null to stop limiting.

Meta description

For SEO reasons, the meta description should typically remain less than ~160 characters. This package, by default, does not limit the length.

To change the limit adjust the configuration value f9web-laravel-meta.description-limit. Set to null to stop limiting.

Canonical

It is important to set a sensible canonical. Optionally, the package can automatically replace user defined strings when generating a canonical.

Due to incorrect setup some Laravel installations allow public and/or index.php within the url.

For instance, /users/create, /public/users/create and /public/index.php/users/create would both be visitable, crawlable and ultimately indexable urls.

By editing the array of removable url strings within f9web-laravel-meta.removable-uri-segments, this behaviour can be controlled.

The package will strip public and index.php from canonical urls automatically, as a default.

Contribution

Any ideas are welcome. Feel free to submit any issues or pull requests.

Testing

composer test

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email rob@f9web.co.uk instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• Rob Allport

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.