Discourse does not produce large, more engaging Twitter cards

feature
4

Is there any way to overwrite the behavior of def crawlable_meta_data with a simple plugin?

In particular, we would like to change:

elsif opts[:image].present?
      result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:card', content: "summary")
      result << tag(:meta, name: "twitter:image", content: opts[:image])

to

elsif opts[:image].present?
      result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:card', content: "summary_large_image")
      result << tag(:meta, name: "twitter:image", content: opts[:image])

as we’re pretty depending on Twitter and big cards for engagement.

I’m quite new to Ruby, so any nudge into the right direction would be appreciated.

Update: Here is the plugin.rb for those who want to patch core because of the small images on Twitter:

after_initialize do
 reloadable_patch do |plugin|
  ApplicationHelper.module_eval do

    def crawlable_meta_data(opts = nil)
        opts ||= {}
        opts[:url] ||= "#{Discourse.base_url_no_prefix}#{request.fullpath}"

        if opts[:image].blank?
          twitter_summary_large_image_url = SiteSetting.site_twitter_summary_large_image_url

          if twitter_summary_large_image_url.present?
            opts[:twitter_summary_large_image] = twitter_summary_large_image_url
          end

          opts[:image] = SiteSetting.site_opengraph_image_url
        end

        # With and height available?

        # Use the correct scheme for opengraph/twitter image
        opts[:image] = get_absolute_image_url(opts[:image]) if opts[:image].present?
        opts[:twitter_summary_large_image] =
          get_absolute_image_url(opts[:twitter_summary_large_image]) if opts[:twitter_summary_large_image].present?

        # Add opengraph & twitter tags
        result = []
        result << tag(:meta, property: 'og:site_name', content: SiteSetting.title)

        if opts[:twitter_summary_large_image].present?
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:card', content: "summary_large_image")
          result << tag(:meta, name: "twitter:image", content: opts[:twitter_summary_large_image])
        elsif opts[:image].present?
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:card', content: "summary_large_image")
          result << tag(:meta, name: "twitter:image", content: opts[:image])
        else
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:card', content: "summary")
        end
        result << tag(:meta, property: "og:image", content: opts[:image]) if opts[:image].present?

        [:url, :title, :description].each do |property|
          if opts[property].present?
            content = (property == :url ? opts[property] : gsub_emoji_to_unicode(opts[property]))
            result << tag(:meta, { property: "og:#{property}", content: content }, nil, true)
            result << tag(:meta, { name: "twitter:#{property}", content: content }, nil, true)
          end
        end

        if opts[:read_time] && opts[:read_time] > 0 && opts[:like_count] && opts[:like_count] > 0
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:label1', value: I18n.t("reading_time"))
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:data1', value: "#{opts[:read_time]} mins 🕑")
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:label2', value: I18n.t("likes"))
          result << tag(:meta, name: 'twitter:data2', value: "#{opts[:like_count]} ❤")
        end

        if opts[:published_time]
          result << tag(:meta, property: 'article:published_time', content: opts[:published_time])
        end

        if opts[:ignore_canonical]
          result << tag(:meta, property: 'og:ignore_canonical', content: true)
        end

        result.join("\n")
      end

  end
 end
end

But it would be better if there would be an option for this going forward and if core would assess min Twitter images sizes to either do summary_large_image or summary (for very small images) if a admin opts for a new setting: “enable large Twitter summary images”.

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