Share API Polyfill

This is a (6kb) polyfill for the Web Share API that can be used in desktop too, so your users can share in their twitter, facebook, messenger, linkedin, sms, e-mail, print, telegram or whatsapp.

It also supports multilanguage (so far, available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, and you can help us with that :) ).

This is a very simple, single file import polyfill.

see the share api polyfill in action

Installing it:

Just import it like so:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/share-api-polyfill/dist/share-min.js"></script>

Note that we are using the unpkg cdn to load it, you could also save it in your own structure so you can cache it with service workers and have it "close" to your own domain.

You can also install it using npm:

npm install share-api-polyfill --save
# or
yarn add share-api-polyfill

Now, it will use the native share panel if it is available (only available on mobile devices) and, if not, it will enable an HTML structure in your page showing options for your users.

Here, check this demo and see the share api polyfill in action.

The Share API

The oficial share api works like this:

navigator.share({
  title: 'Web Share API Polyfill',
  text: 'A polyfill for the Share API. Use it to share in both desktops and mobile devices.',
  url: location.href
})
.then( _ => console.log('Yay, you shared it :)'))
.catch( error => console.log('Oh noh! You couldn\'t share it! :\'(\n', error));

But in this case, you can also pass your Facebook App Id to enable sharing with messenger. Also, you can pass in a list of hashtags to be used when sharing with twitter.

navigator.share({
  title: 'Web Share API Polyfill',
  text: 'A polyfill for the Share API. Use it to share in both desktops and mobile devices.',
  url: location.href,

  // extra, optional options
  fbId: '123456789123456',
  hashtags: ['javascript', 'shareAPI', 'Polyfill']
})
.then( _ => console.log('Yay, you shared it :)'))
.catch( error => console.log('Oh noh! You couldn\'t share it! :\'(\n', error));

You can pass the hashtags as a single (comma separated) string, or as an array.

Multi language

It will try and use the supported languages based on user's browser language configuration.
If the language is not found, it will uses a fallback (default english).

Currently supported languages:

Feel free to contribute with more languages sending Pull Requests for them :)

Turning features off, in Desktop

You can disable some of the social buttons from the tool by passing a second object as argument.
As your mobile device will probably have native support for the share API, it will be ignored, being applied only for desktops.

Example:

navigator.share({
    title: 'Web Share API Polyfill',
    text: 'A polyfill for the Share API. Use it to share in both desktops and mobile devices.',
    url: location.href,

    fbId: '123456789123456',
    hashtags: 'javascript,shareAPI,polyfill'
  },
  {
    // change this configurations to hide specific unnecessary icons
    copy: true,
    email: true,
    print: true,
    sms: true,
    messenger: true,
    facebook: true,
    whatsapp: true,
    twitter: true,
    linkedin: true,
    telegram: true,
    skype: true,
    language: 'pt' // specify the default language
  }
)
  .then( _ => console.log('Yay, you shared it :)'))
  .catch( error => console.log('Oh noh! You couldn\'t share it! :\'(\n', error));

If you disable Skype, it will no longer load Skype's SDK, what might be something you want, in case you would like to improve the privacy in your project, avoiding loading third party libraries.

It's open source

Yup, it's open source and you can contribute to it :)

Please refer to our CONTRIBUTING.md and help us improve this tool.

To re-build id, just install the dependencies:

npm install

And build it with gulp

npm run build

And try it locally

npm run demo