Add Set Meta Tags In ERB Views as a Rails TIL

2026-01-13 12:08:02 +00:00 · 2025-01-28 18:30:12 -06:00
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+# Set Meta Tags In ERB Views
+
+There are all kinds of meta tags that we may want to set for the pages that our
+Rails app serves. A lot of these are for SEO and social sharing. Let's look at
+how to add `og:description` meta tags to our views.
+
+I'll start with a helper method in `app/helpers/application_helper.rb`:
+
+```ruby
+module ApplicationHelper
+  def meta_description(desc)
+    content_for(:description) { desc }
+  end
+end
+```
+
+Then, I'll update my `app/views/layouts/application.html.erb` to consume the
+description when provided.
+
+```ruby
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html>
+  <head>
+    <!-- ... -->
+
+    <meta
+      property="og:description"
+      content="<%= content_for?(:description) ? yield(:description) : 'Default description' %>"
+    >
+
+    <!-- ... -->
+  </head>
+
+  <!-- ... -->
+</html>
+```
+
+Now I have a default description for all my views that I can override as needed
+with the `meta_description` helper.
+
+```ruby
+# app/views/posts/show.html.erb
+<%= meta_description @post.body.split("\n").first %>
+
+<!-- ... -->
+```
+
+If I reload the page and inspect the meta tags in `<head>`, I should find the
+`og:description` tag with the corresponding value.
+
+This can be extended to apply all the different meta tags (e.g. Open Graph and
+Twitter) to make links to these pages render well across the internet.