Easy Open Graph Objects in Rails


So I made a Gem. Recently I’ve been working on a couple of Rails apps in which I have needed to add Open Graph meta tags in order to map objects within my app onto Facebook’s social graph. This is done by simply adding <meta> tags to your document defining specific properties such as title, image, date etc. Here is an example taken from Facebook’s tutorial:

<meta property="fb:app_id" content="[YOUR_APP_ID]" /> 
<meta property="og:type" content="[YOUR_APP_NAMESPACE]:recipe" /> 
<meta property="og:title" content="Stuffed Cookies" /> 
<meta property="og:image" content="http://fbwerks.com:8000/zhen/cookie.jpg" /> 
<meta property="og:description" content="The Turducken of Cookies" /> 
<meta property="og:url" content="http://fbwerks.com:8000/zhen/cookie.html">

This is quite a simple example, there are many more options for custom properties and object types, each requiring specific property names, some in the og and fb namespaces, some in your app’s custom namespace. There are also different data types: strings, integers, arrays etc. I played with a few Gems including meta-tags and actsasopengraph, both offer useful helpers to make the job of adding these meta tags easier. After trying different combinations I was still findinig it hard to find a tidy way to map attributes straight from my models to meta tags in my RESTful views.

Enter acts_as_graph_object

My first venture into the Gem world, the gem is intended to allow such model to view mappings to be super easy.

I started the project with the following goals:

1. Find a way to provide model URLs using the url_for view/controller helpers.

2. Map common attribute names to og meta tags (e.g. title, description, image etc).

3. Provide helpers that allow resulting meta tags to be easily added to global layout in a standar Rails REST architecture. i.e. for all /show actions, add meta tags to head if object has open graph attributes.

4. Allow for easy configuration for constants such as fb:app_id & fb:admins as well as an app namespace to be used in og:type and any custom attributes.

5. Automatically handle arrays, i.e. :cast => ['Tom Cruise', 'Kelly McGillis', 'Val Kilmer'] becomes:

<meta property="my-app:cast" content="Tom Cruise" />
<meta property="my-app:cast" content="Kelly McGillis" />
<meta property="my-app:cast" content="Val Kilmer" />

6. Keep it unobtrusive! no heavy configuration in models, something simple, e.g.

class Movie < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_graph_object :custom => [:director, :writer, :cast]

This would map all standard properties title, description, image, app_id etc along with the custom properties director, writer & cast.

7. Write proper tests and documentation!

Putting it to use..

So I recently released v0.0.9 and it’s starting to look pretty much there (minus that last point :O).. Here’s how to add it to your Rails app:

gem install acts_as_graph_object

Then just add the dependancy to your Gemfile.



# app/config/initializers/acts_as_graph_object.rb
ActsAsGraphObject.configure do |config|
  config.namespace = 'my-app'
  config.app_id = 12345
  config.admins = [1245, 6789]

Default URL Method

In order to use the built in @model.url method you need to set the following config option:

# app/config/environments/production.rb
routes.default_url_options[:host] = 'my-app.com'

Add acts_as_graph_object…

# app/models/movie.rb
class Movie < ActiveRecord::Base

  def cast

Outputting meta tags

Use the graph_object_tags_for(@movie) helper to output the resulting <meta> tags. You can use this in combination with content_for to push the results into your <head>:

# app/views/layouts/application.html.erb    
    <%= yield :meta_tags %>

# app/views/movies/show.html.erb
<% content_for :meta_tags, graph_object_tags_for(@movie) %>

Overriding from view

If you want to override a value from the view (for example to use a url_for helper):

# app/views/movies/show.html.erb
<% content_for :meta_tags, graph_object_tags_for(@movie, :url => movie_url(@movie)) %>

Alternative attribute names (v0.0.7)

You can now use non-default names for the standard Open Graph properties and the Gem will attempt to pick these up. Here are the properties and their alternative names:

# standard object properties & alternative names
default_properties = {
  :title           => [:name, :label],
  :type            => [:kind, :group, :class],
  :image           => [:picture, :photo],
  :url             => [:permalink, :link],
  :description     => [:info, :details],
  :site_name       => [:site],
  :latitude        => [:lat],
  :longitude       => [:long],
  :street_address  => [:address],
  :locality        => [:locale, :area],
  :region          => [:province, :territory],
  :postal_code     => [:post_code, :zip_code, :zip],
  :country_name    => [:country],
  :email           => [:email_address],
  :phone_number    => [:phone],
  :fax_number      => [:fax]

And there you have it! Check out the code on GitHub, fix/fork/improve! :)