React-Helmet with TypeScript

React-Helmet is a library that allows you to manipulate the head of a React app. This can be useful for things like SEO, social sharing, and more. With TypeScript, we can take advantage of its type definitions and improve our code's readability and maintainability.

Install

You can install React-Helmet and its type definitions using your favorite package manager:

npm install react-helmet @types/react-helmet
# or
yarn add react-helmet @types/react-helmet

Usage

To use React-Helmet, you first need to import it:

import { Helmet } from "react-helmet";

Once imported, you can use the Helmet component to update the head of your app. Here's a simple example:

import React from "react";
import { Helmet } from "react-helmet";

const MyComponent: React.FC = () => {
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <title>My Page Title</title>
        <meta name="description" content="My page description" />
      </Helmet>
      <div>Hello, world!</div>
    </>
  );
};

In this example, we set the page title and description using the Helmet component. We can set many other attributes, such as meta, link, and script tags. We can also include server-side rendering of the head using Helmet.renderStatic().

TypeScript Types

One great advantage of using TypeScript with React-Helmet is that we get type definitions for all the attributes we set. For example, if we want to set an Open Graph image URL, we can do this:

import React from "react";
import { Helmet } from "react-helmet";

const MyComponent: React.FC = () => {
  const ogImageUrl = "https://example.com/my-image.jpg";
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <meta property="og:image" content={ogImageUrl} />
      </Helmet>
      <div>Hello, world!</div>
    </>
  );
};

In this example, we set the Open Graph image property and pass in a URL string. Because we imported the type definitions for React-Helmet, we get type checking and autocompletion for all the available properties.

Caveats

One important thing to note is that not all attributes are available as TypeScript types. For example, if we want to set a nonce attribute on a script tag, we need to do this:

import React from "react";
import { Helmet } from "react-helmet";

const MyComponent: React.FC = () => {
  const myNonce = "abcd1234";
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <script nonce={myNonce}>
          console.log("Hello, world!");
        </script>
      </Helmet>
      <div>Hello, world!</div>
    </>
  );
};

In this example, we set a nonce attribute on the script tag by passing in a string variable. However, we don't get any type checking or autocompletion for this attribute, because it's not part of the type definitions.

Conclusion

React-Helmet is a powerful library that allows you to manipulate the head of your React app. With TypeScript, we can take advantage of its type definitions and improve our code's maintainability and readability. By using React-Helmet and TypeScript together, you can create better, more maintainable code.