mastodon-post

A Web Component to display Mastodon posts and their metadata.

Demo | Custom template demo | Further reading

Examples

General usage example:

<script type="module" src="mastodon-post.js"></script>

<mastodon-post>
  <a href="https://mastodon.design/@DavidDarnes/109824258017750161">
    Discuss on Mastodon
  </a>
</mastodon-post>

Example using a custom template:

<script type="module" src="mastodon-post.js"></script>

<template id="mastodon-post-template">
  <blockquote data-key="content"></blockquote>
</template>

<mastodon-post>
  <a href="https://mastodon.design/@DavidDarnes/109824258017750161">
    Discuss on Mastodon
  </a>
</mastodon-post>

Example using a more complex custom template:

<script type="module" src="mastodon-post.js"></script>

<template id="mastodon-post-template">
  <dl>
    <dt>Reposts</dt>
    <dd data-key="reblogs_count"></dd>
    <dt>Replies</dt>
    <dd data-key="replies_count"></dd>
    <dt>Favourites</dt>
    <dd data-key="favourites_count"></dd>
  </dl>
  <a data-key="url">
    View original post from <img alt="avatar" data-key="account.avatar" />
    <strong data-key="account.display_name"></strong> on
    <strong data-key="hostname"></strong>
  </a>
</template>

<mastodon-post>
  <a href="https://mastodon.design/@DavidDarnes/109824258017750161">
    Discuss on Mastodon
  </a>
</mastodon-post>

Features

This Web Component allows you to:

• Turn a regular Mastodon post link into a quoted Mastodon post
• Surface the post metadata alongside the post, e.g. reply count, reblog count, favourite count
• Use a custom template for all instances of the component on the page using a data-key="name" data attributes
• Use a custom template for specific instances using the template attribute
• Retrieve nested data using the data-key attribute and typical JavaScript key referencing, e.g. data-key="account.display_name" or data-key="media_attachments[0]preview_url"

Installation

You have a few options (choose one of these):

1. Install via npm: npm install @daviddarnes/mastodon-post
2. Download the source manually from GitHub into your project.
3. Skip this step and use the script directly via a 3rd party CDN (not recommended for production use)

Usage

Make sure you include the <script> in your project (choose one of these):

<!-- Host yourself -->
<script type="module" src="mastodon-post.js"></script>

<!-- 3rd party CDN, not recommended for production use -->
<script
  type="module"
  src="https://www.unpkg.com/@daviddarnes/[email protected]/mastodon-post.js"
></script>

<!-- 3rd party CDN, not recommended for production use -->
<script
  type="module"
  src="https://esm.sh/@daviddarnes/[email protected]"
></script>

Using a custom template

The default template for the component looks like this:

<figure>
  <blockquote data-key="content"></blockquote>
  <figcaption>
    <cite>
      <a data-key="url">
        <span data-key="username"></span>
        @
        <span data-key="hostname"></span>
      </a>
    </cite>
    <dl>
      <dt>Reposts</dt>
      <dd data-key="reblogs_count"></dd>
      <dt>Replies</dt>
      <dd data-key="replies_count"></dd>
      <dt>Favourites</dt>
      <dd data-key="favourites_count"></dd>
    </dl>
  </figcaption>
</figure>

However you can customise the template by using a <template> element with an id of mastodon-post-template, which will be used for every instance of the component on the page. Here's an example which just exposes the vanity metrics of the Mastodon post as a <dl>:

<template id="mastodon-post-template">
  <dl>
    <dt>Reposts</dt>
    <dd data-key="reblogs_count"></dd>
    <dt>Replies</dt>
    <dd data-key="replies_count"></dd>
    <dt>Favourites</dt>
    <dd data-key="favourites_count"></dd>
  </dl>
</template>

You can also use different templates on the same page by using the template attribute to target <template> elements with a specific id:

<template id="custom-template">
  <a data-key="content, url"></a>
</template>

<mastodon-post template="custom-template">
  <a href="https://mastodon.design/@DavidDarnes/109824258017750161">
    Discuss on Mastodon
  </a>
</mastodon-post>

Data is applied using a data-key data attribute. The value of this attribute should correspond to a data point within a Mastodon public status API response. The official Mastodon documentation has an example of a status response here. The data-key attribute also allows you to target nested data using typical JavaScript dot notation:

<template id="mastodon-post-template">
  <figure>
    <blockquote data-key="content"></blockquote>
    <figcaption>
      <cite>
        <a data-key="url">
          View original post from
          <img alt="avatar" data-key="account.avatar" />
          <strong data-key="account.display_name"></strong> on
          <strong data-key="hostname"></strong>
        </a>
      </cite>
    </figcaption>
  </figure>
</template>

Note that for <a> and <img> elements the value won't be applied to it's content if the string being returned starts with http and instead will be applied to the href and src attributes respectively.

Check out the custom template demo as well as the source code for reference.

Credit

With thanks to the following people:

• Zach Leatherman for inspiring this Web Component repo template