HeadMeta Templating Helper

The HeadMeta templating helper is an extension of the Placeholder Templating Helper

The HTML <meta> element is used to provide meta information about your HTML document -- typically keywords, document character set, caching pragmas, etc. Meta tags may be either of the http-equiv or name types, must contain a content attribute, and can also have either of the lang or scheme modifier attributes.

The HeadMeta helper supports the following methods for setting and adding meta tags:

• appendName($keyValue, $content, $conditionalName)

• offsetSetName($index, $keyValue, $content, $conditionalName)

• prependName($keyValue, $content, $conditionalName)

• setName($keyValue, $content, $modifiers)

• appendHttpEquiv($keyValue, $content, $conditionalHttpEquiv)

• offsetSetHttpEquiv($index, $keyValue, $content, $conditionalHttpEquiv)

• prependHttpEquiv($keyValue, $content, $conditionalHttpEquiv)

• setHttpEquiv($keyValue, $content, $modifiers)

• appendProperty($property, $content, $modifiers)

• offsetSetProperty($index, $property, $content, $modifiers)

• prependProperty($property, $content, $modifiers)

• setProperty($property, $content, $modifiers)

The $keyValue item is used to define a value for the name or http-equiv key; $content is the value for the content key, and $modifiers is an optional associative array that can contain keys for lang and/or scheme.

You may also set meta tags using the headMeta() helper method, which has the following signature: headMeta($content, $keyValue, $keyType = 'name', $modifiers = [], $placement = 'APPEND').

$keyValue is the content for the key specified in $keyType, which should be either name or http-equiv. $placement can be SET (overwrites all previously stored values), APPEND (added to end of stack), or PREPEND (added to top of stack).

HeadMeta overrides each of append(), offsetSet(), prepend(), and set() to enforce usage of the special methods as listed above. Internally, it stores each item as a stdClass token, which it later serializes using the itemToString() method. This allows you to perform checks on the items in the stack, and optionally modify these items by simply modifying the object returned.

Basic Usage

You may specify a new meta tag at any time. Typically, you will specify client-side caching rules or SEO keywords.

For instance, if you wish to specify SEO description, you'd be creating a meta name tag with the name 'keywords' and the content the keywords you wish to associate with your page:

// setting meta description
$this->headMeta()->appendName('description', 'My SEO description for my awesome page');

// setting open graph tags
$this->headMeta()->setProperty('og:title', 'my article title');
$this->headMeta()->setProperty('og:type', 'article');

// setting content type and character set
$this->headMeta()->appendHttpEquiv('Content-Type', 'text/html; charset=UTF-8')
                 ->appendHttpEquiv('Content-Language', 'en-US');

When you're ready to place your meta tags in the layout, simply echo the helper:

<?= $this->headMeta() ?>