Main flow

1. Pass a YAML file or a named list.
2. social_meta() reads the data.
3. Default values are filled in where needed.
4. The four required fields are checked.
5. The function builds a tags$head() block with metadata.

Inputs

social_meta(meta) accepts:

• a string containing a path to YAML
• or a named list

Defaults

If you do not set them yourself, these defaults are used:

• locale = "en_US"
• robots = "index,follow,max-image-preview:large,max-snippet:-1,max-video-preview:-1"
• twitter_card = "summary_large_image"
• bing_site_verification = Sys.getenv("SHINYSEO_BING_SITE_VERIFICATION") when present
• twitter_site = Sys.getenv("SHINYSEO_TWITTER_SITE") when present
• twitter_creator = Sys.getenv("SHINYSEO_TWITTER_CREATOR") when present
• schema_type = "WebApplication"
• operating_system = "Any"
• author_type = "Person"
• publisher_type = "Organization"
• in_language = locale

What tags are created

The function builds:

• <link rel="canonical">
• meta name="description"
• meta name="robots"
• meta property="og:*"
• meta name="twitter:*"
• meta name="msvalidate.01" when Bing verification is set or when SHINYSEO_BING_SITE_VERIFICATION is present
• meta name="google-site-verification" when Google verification is set
• meta name="yandex-verification" when Yandex verification is set
• meta name="baidu-site-verification" when Baidu verification is set
• meta name="naver-site-verification" when Naver verification is set
• meta name="facebook-domain-verification" when Facebook domain verification is set
• meta name="p:domain_verify" when Pinterest domain verification is set
• <script type="application/ld+json"> for schema.org
• no <title> tag; set the title in the app UI instead

Open Graph

These fields are used directly in Open Graph:

• title
• description
• url
• image
• site_name
• locale
• image_width
• image_height
• image_type
• image_alt

Twitter Card

These fields are used directly in Twitter Card:

• twitter_card
• twitter_site with fallback to SHINYSEO_TWITTER_SITE
• twitter_creator with fallback to SHINYSEO_TWITTER_CREATOR
• twitter_image_alt

Bing verification

Bing verification is used directly when the following is set:

• bing_site_verification

If that field is missing, SHINYSEO_BING_SITE_VERIFICATION is used when present.

Schema.org JSON-LD

JSON-LD is created with these base fields:

• @context = "https://schema.org"
• @type = schema_type
• name = title
• description = description
• url = url
• inLanguage = in_language

Additional fields may be included:

• application_category
• operating_system
• educational_use
• is_accessible_for_free
• disclaimer
• author_name
• publisher_name

If you set schema = FALSE, JSON-LD is omitted entirely.

Practical example

ui <- shiny::fluidPage(
  shinyseo::social_meta(list(
    title = "Calculator",
    description = "A simple app for calculating things.",
    url = "https://example.no",
    image = "https://example.no/preview.png",
    twitter_site = "@example",
    twitter_creator = "@example",
    schema = TRUE
  )),
  shiny::h1("Calculator")
)

When to use it

Use the package when you want a small, tidy metadata solution in a Shiny app without building a custom metadata engine.

It is especially useful when you:

• have one app or a small number of apps
• want to manage metadata from a YAML file
• want the same metadata across multiple environments
• want social sharing and search results to behave predictably