How to embed link with preview in React Application

Introduction

When building a web application, it's often useful to show a preview of a link's content—like how social media platforms show link previews when you share a URL. So instead of just url text you can show og informations like pictures and desccription as well, beside url.

In this post, I'll walk you through embedding links in a React app, while fetching Open Graph metadata (such as title, image, and description) using axios and cheerio for scraping the target page's HTML.

We’ll create a simple EmbeddedLink component that fetches and displays Open Graph metadata for any provided URL.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following installed:

React – Set up a React project using Create React App or any method you prefer.
Axios – For making HTTP requests.
Cheerio – For parsing and scraping HTML (a server-side jQuery-like library usually used for scraping).

You can install Axios and Cheerio using the following commands:

npm install axios cheerio

Step 1: Creating the EmbeddedLink Component

We'll create a new EmbeddedLink component that takes in a url as a prop and fetches the Open Graph metadata from that link which we will use later on. Here's the full code:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import axios from 'axios';
import cheerio from 'cheerio';

const EmbeddedLink = ({ url }) => {
    const [loading, setLoading] = useState(true);
    const [error, setError] = useState(null);
    const [imageUrl, setImageUrl] = useState('');
    const [title, setTitle] = useState('');
    const [description, setDescription] = useState('');

    useEffect(() => {
        const fetchOGData = async () => {
            try {
                const response = await axios.get(url, {
                    headers: {
                        'origin': 'https://mysite.com'
                    }
                });
                const html = response.data;

                // Parse HTML content using Cheerio
                const $ = cheerio.load(html);
                const ogImage = $('meta[property="og:image"]').attr('content');
                const ogTitle = $('meta[property="og:title"]').attr('content');
                const ogDesc = $('meta[property="og:description"]').attr('content');

                setImageUrl(ogImage || '');
                setTitle(ogTitle || '');
                setDescription(ogDesc || '');
                setLoading(false);
            } catch (error) {
                setError(error);
                setLoading(false);
            }
        };

        fetchOGData();
    }, [url]);

    if (loading) return <div>Loading...</div>;
    if (error) return <div>Error: {error.message}</div>;

    return (
        <div className="embedded-link border-2 p-5 my-3 border-neutral-800">
            {imageUrl && <img src={imageUrl} alt={title} className="cover-image max-w-50 w-auto h-auto" />}
            <a href={url} target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" className="text-indigo-500 underline font-bold text-2xl">
                {title && <h3>{title}</h3>}
            </a>
            {!imageUrl && !title && <p>No preview available</p>}
            <p className="my-3">{description}</p>
            <p className="text-slate-500">{url}</p>
        </div>
    );
};

export default EmbeddedLink;

Step 2: Using the EmbeddedLink Component

You can now use the EmbeddedLink component in your React app like this:

import React from 'react';
import EmbeddedLink from './EmbeddedLink';

function App() {
    return (
        <div className="App">
            <h1>Link Preview Example</h1>
            <EmbeddedLink url="https://example.com" />
        </div>
    );
}

export default App;

This will render a preview of the URL provided, with its image, title, and description.

Handling Errors and Loading States

We handle potential errors and loading states by showing appropriate messages to the user:

While the metadata is being fetched, a simple "Loading..." message is shown or you can use some animation spinner or whatever.
If something goes wrong during the fetch (e.g., a network issue), the error message is displayed.