README

This Laravel package provides the possibility to generate share links (social media share buttons) for your site in a flexible and convenient way within seconds. The package was originated from the Laravel Share.

Available services

Facebook
X (formerly Twitter)
LinkedIn
Telegram
WhatsApp
Reddit
Hacker News
VKontakte
Pinterest
Pocket
Evernote
Skype
Xing
Copy the link
Mail the link

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require kudashevs/laravel-share-buttons

If you don't use auto-discovery just add a ShareButtonsServiceProvider to the config/app.php

'providers' => [
    Kudashevs\ShareButtons\Providers\ShareButtonsServiceProvider::class,
],

By default, the ShareButtons class instance is bound to the sharebuttons alias. You might want to add a ShareButtonsFacade::class to the aliases, too.

Don't forget to publish the configuration file and assets. The configuration file is required.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Kudashevs\ShareButtons\Providers\ShareButtonsServiceProvider"

In case of a major change, it is recommended to back up your config file and republish a new one from scratch.

You can customize the process of publishing assets. If you want to limit the type of assets, you can use the --tag option with one of the following tags: config, js (all js files), vanilla, jquery, css.

Assets

By default, this package relies on the Font Awesome icons. The buttons' interactivity is implemented in two different ways (via Vanilla JS and jQuery). However, you can use any custom fonts, icons, or JavaScript.

Font Awesome and default styles

To enable Font Awesome icons, use the code sample below in your template. For further information on how to use Font Awesome, please read the introduction.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/6.4.2/css/all.min.css">

To enable the default styles, you should publish the assets tagged as css (the command will create a resources/css/share-buttons.css file). After publishing, you can copy this file to your public/css folder and use it directly by applying the code sample below. Or you can integrate the css file into your assets compilation flow.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ asset('css/share-buttons.css') }}">

JavaScript

To enable interaction on social media buttons with JavaScript, you should publish the assets tagged as vanilla (the command will create a resources/js/share-buttons.js file). After publishing, you can copy this file to your public/js folder and use it directly by applying the code sample below. Or you can integrate this file into your assets compilation flow.

<script src="{{ asset('js/share-buttons.js') }}"></script>

jQuery

To enable interaction on social media buttons with jQuery, you should publish the assets tagged as jquery (the command will create a resources/js/share-buttons.jquery.js file). After publishing, you can copy this file to your public/js folder and use it directly by applying the code sample below. Or you can integrate this file into your assets compilation flow.

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha256-4+XzXVhsDmqanXGHaHvgh1gMQKX40OUvDEBTu8JcmNs=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="{{ asset('js/share-buttons.jquery.js') }}"></script>

Usage

Let's take a look at a short usage example (you can find a detailed usage example in the corresponding section).

ShareButtons::page('https://site.com', 'Page title', [
        'title' => 'Page title',
        'rel' => 'nofollow noopener noreferrer',
    ])
    ->facebook()
    ->linkedin(['rel' => 'follow'])
    ->render();

The code above will result into the following HTML code:

<div id="social-buttons">
    <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsite.com&quote=Page+title" class="social-button" title="Page title" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"><span class="fab fa-facebook-square"></span></a>
    <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsite.com&title=Page+title&summary=" class="social-button" title="Page title" rel="follow"><span class="fab fa-linkedin"></span></a>
</div>

Fluent interface

The ShareButtons instance provides a fluent interface. The fluent interface is a pattern based on method chaining. To start a method chaining you just need to use one of the methods listed below (the starting point).

page($url, $title, $options)              # Creates a chaining with a given URL and a given page title
createForPage($url, $title, $options)     # Does the same (an alias of the page() method)
currentPage($title, $options)             # Creates a chaining with the current page URL and a given page title
createForCurrentPage($title, $options)    # Does the same (an alias of the currentPage() method)

Add buttons

To generate a single social media button, you just need to add one of the following methods to the method chaining. Each method accepts an array of options (more information about these options in the local options section).

facebook($options)      # Generates a Facebook share button
twitter($options)       # Generates a Twitter share button
linkedin($options)      # Generates a LinkedIn share button
telegram($options)      # Generates a Telegram share button
whatsapp($options)      # Generates a WhatsApp share button
reddit($options)        # Generates a Reddit share button
hackernews($options)    # Generates a Hacker News share button
vkontakte($options)     # Generates a VKontakte share button
pinterest($options)     # Generates a Pinterest share button
pocket($options)        # Generates a Pocket share button
evernote($options)      # Generates an Evernote share button
skype($options)         # Generates a Skype share button
xing($options)          # Generates a Xing share button
copylink($options)      # Generates a copy to the clipboard share button
mailto($options)        # Generates a send by mail share button

These methods are a part of the fluent interface. Therefore, to create multiple social media share buttons you just need to chain them.

Getting share buttons

You can use a ShareButtons instance as a string or cast it to a string to get ready-to-use HTML code. However, this is not the best way. If you want to be clear in your intentions, use one of the methods that return generated HTML code. These methods are:

render()                # Returns a generated share buttons HTML code
getShareButtons()       # Does the same (an alias of the render() method)

Getting raw links

Sometimes, you may only want the raw links without any HTML. In such a case, just use the getRawLinks method.

getRawLinks()           # Returns an array of generated links

Parameters

There is the possibility of providing different options to style and decorate the resulting HTML code at different levels.

Global options

Every time a chaining method is called, it accepts several arguments, including a page URL (depending on the method), a page title, and an array of options. These options are global because they change the representation of all share buttons. These options are:

'block_prefix' => 'tag'          # Sets a share buttons block prefix (default is <div id="social-buttons">)
'block_suffix' => 'tag'          # Sets a share buttons block suffix (default is </div>)
'element_prefix' => 'tag'        # Sets an element prefix (default is empty)
'element_suffix' => 'tag'        # Sets an element suffix (default is empty)
'id' => 'value'                  # Adds an HTML id attribute to the output links
'class' => 'value'               # Adds an HTML class attribute to the output links
'title' => 'value'               # Adds an HTML title attribute to the output links
'rel' => 'value'                 # Adds an HTML rel attribute to the output links

Local options

Any of the share button methods, that generates a button, accepts several arguments. These options are local because they will be applied to a specific element only. The local options have a higher priority. Therefore, they will overwrite the global options if there is any overlap. At the moment, the package supports the following local options:

'id' => 'value'                  # Adds an HTML id attribute to the button link
'class' => 'value'               # Adds an HTML class attribute to the button link
'title' => 'value'               # Adds an HTML title attribute to the button link
'rel' => 'value'                 # Adds an HTML rel attribute to the button link
'summary' => 'value'             # Adds a summary text to the URL (linkedin button only)

Configuration

The configuration settings are located in the config/share-buttons.php file.

Representation section

This section contains settings related to the "container" in which the social media buttons will be displayed.

'block_prefix' => 'tag'         # Sets a block prefix (default is <div id="social-buttons">)
'block_suffix' => 'tag'         # Sets a block suffix (default is </div>)
'element_prefix' => 'tag'       # Sets an element prefix (default is empty)
'element_suffix' => 'tag'       # Sets an element suffix (default is empty)

Share buttons section

Each social media share button has its own individual configuration settings.

'url' => 'value'                # A share button URL template (is used to generate a button's URL)
'text' => 'value'               # A default text to be added to the url (is used when the page title is empty)
'extra' => [                    # Extra options that are required by some specific buttons
    'summary' => 'value'        # A default summary to be added to the url (linkedin only) 
    'raw' => 'value'            # A boolean defines whether to skip the URL-encoding of the url
    'hash' => 'value'           # A boolean defines whether to use a hash instead of the url
]

Templates section

Each share button has a corresponding link template. A template contains several elements that will be substituted with data from different arguments and options. The format of these elements depends on the templater setting. By default, these elements are:

:url                            # Will be replaced with a prepared URL
:id                             # Will be replaced with an id attribute
:class                          # Will be replaced with a class attribute
:title                          # Will be replaced with a title attribute
:rel                            # Will be replaced with a rel attribute

Templaters section

For processing different templates and substitute elements in them, the package uses templaters (template engines). By default, these options are optional (if no value provided, the default templater will be used).

'templater'                     # A template engine for processing link templates
'url_templater'                 # A template engine for processing share buttons URLs

A detailed usage example

To summarize all of the information from above, let's take a look at a real-life example. We begin with one of the methods that start the fluent interface, and we provide some global options. Then, we add some specific methods that generate social media share buttons. At this step, we can provide any local options, as it is done in the linkedin() method. Finally, we finish the fluent interface chain with one of the methods that return the resulting HTML code.

ShareButtons::page('https://site.com', 'Page title', [
        'block_prefix' => '<ul>',
        'block_suffix' => '</ul>',
        'element_prefix' => '<li>',
        'element_suffix' => '</li>',
        'class' => 'my-class',
        'id' => 'my-id',
        'title' => 'my-title',
        'rel' => 'nofollow noopener noreferrer',
    ])
    ->facebook()
    ->linkedin(['id' => 'linked', 'class' => 'hover', 'rel' => 'follow', 'summary' => 'cool summary'])
    ->render();