Share it

I've built social sharing buttons a few times and decided it was time to extract it to a package! The goal of this package is to do a few things:

Render appropriate meta tags for Facebook/OG and Twitter (via spiderable)
Support social sharing buttons with bootstrap-3 (default) and font-awesome
Expand to support other social platforms besides just twitter & facebook, in a configurable way

Quick Start

meteor add joshowens:shareit

Usage

Simply put {{>shareit}} in your template. We use the following keys in your current data context (more on this below):

title
author - expects a string or a function (see below). The function is used only for twitter. If an object is returned, and author.profile.twitter exists, this value will be used instead.
excerpt or description or summary in FB and Twitter

and optionally:

url - defaults to current page URL
sitenap - defaults to current page hostname
thumbnail - image in FB and Twitter. Expects a function (see below).

Notes:

Facebook:
The og:type is article.
Images should at least 1200x630; if above 600x315 you'll get a big photo share, and below, a small photo, see this.
Sharing Best Practices for Websites & Mobile Apps
Twitter
The twitter:card type is summary.
Image, min of 120x120 & < 1MB, see this. For "large image summaries" (in our roadmap, below), at least 280x150 & < 1 MB, see this.
Google+ tags are not added yet, but when you share on Google+, it's smart enough to get everything it needs from the other tags.
Social media image dimensions 2014: the complete guide for Facebook, Twitter and Google +

Regarding the Data Context

{{> shareit}} will work anywhere in a template where {{title}}, {{excerpt}}, etc would work. The source of the data context would be the data() function for a route in iron:router, or from a surrounding {{#with}} tag. (You can use {{#each}} too, but only the last rendered block will be used to set the page meta tags:

<template name="article">
  <h1>{{title}}</h1>
  {{> shareit}}
</template>

Just like any Meteor template/component, you can override the data context for a single component by specifying a single non-key argument. e.g. {{> shareit shareData}} will get title from {{shareData.title}}, etc. shareData can itself be a key in the current data context, or a helper function of the current template, e.g.:

<template name="article">
  {{shareit shareData}}
</template>

Template.article.helpers({
  shareData: function() {
    return { title: ..., etc } || MyCol.findOne() || etc
  }
});

Functions

For keys that take functions (author, image), the value of this function will be used. We use these functions to do lookups. If the function is setup anonymously inside a helper, this is the current data context. e.g.

Template.article.helpers({
  shareData: function() {
    return {
      title: this.data,
      author: Meteor.users.findOne(this.authorId)
  }
});

Configuration

Somewhere in your client (not server) code you can configure ShareIt. This is completely optional and the defaults are listed below:

  ShareIt.configure({
    sites: {                // nested object for extra configurations
        'facebook': {
            'appId': null	// use sharer.php when it's null, otherwise use share dialog
        },
        'twitter': {},
        'googleplus': {},
        'pinterest': {}
    }
    classes: "large btn", // string (default: 'large btn')
                          // The classes that will be placed on the sharing buttons, bootstrap by default.
    iconOnly: false,      // boolean (default: false)
                          // Don't put text on the sharing buttons
    applyColors: true,     // boolean (default: true)
                          // apply classes to inherit each social networks background color
    faSize: '',            // font awesome size
    faClass: ''		  // font awesome classes like square
  });

If you have valid facebook app id, we recommend you configure it to use Facebook Share Dialog. If no app id is provided, it would use deprecated sharer.php. Example facebook configuration:

    ShareIt.configure({
        sites: {
            'facebook': {
                'appId': YOUR_APP_ID
            }
        }
    });

Roadmap

Support text OR functions for thumbnail
Rename thumbnail to image with backwards compatilility (FB suggestion of 1200x630 is not a thumbnail :))
Twitter: use summary for thumbnail, and summary_large_image for image
Google+ tags (snippets)

samcorcos / shareit