Sourav Dey
Hashnode Blog Cards 🏗️ - Rich Previews for Your Blog Links

Hashnode Blog Cards 🏗️ - Rich Previews for Your Blog Links

07 Feb, 2021 • 4 min read

Turn plain blog links into beautiful, embeddable card previews. Built for Hashnode bloggers who want their content to stand out when shared.

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⚡ The Hashnode Blog Cards is a set of GET requests which will fetch the Blogs from your Hashnode ids with few parameters and will create SVG cards to bring 😎 awesomeness to your blog links. 🎉
Website link https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app
Github link https://github.com/Souravdey777/HashnodeBlogCards
It can be added anywhere in Github, Hashnode, Devpost, Postman Documentation, or any markdown editor. It can also be added to any website with HTML syntax with just the img tag
Now you can add your Hashnode blogs to your GitHub profile in .md,.mdx,.html,.jsx, and many more files to show your latest blogs or to your Repositories or even to any website.
It is simple to use and the APIs can be explored with the Hashnode Blog Cards API Playground.
Hashnode Blog Cards website - API playground landing page

How to use it?

getHashnodeBlog

This API endpoint will fetch a specific blog by its URL
url
https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app/api/getHashnodeBlog?url=https://souravdey777.hashnode.dev/flexbox-guide-flexbox-layout-made-simple-with-an-interactive-tool&large=true&theme=light
Response
getHashnodeBlog API response - blog card for Flexbox Guide, large, light theme

List of parameters

  • url= The URL of the specific blog
This is a mandatory parameter
eg. https://souravdey777.hashnode.dev/flexbox-guide-flexbox-layout-made-simple-with-an-interactive-tool
  • theme= The theme of the Card.
This is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is light. Other values are possible values are dark or blue
  • large= The size of the Card.
This is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is false. And when set to true gives a larger Card.

getHashnodeBlogBySequence

This API endpoint will fetch a specific blog by the Hashnode username of the author and the serial no of the blog starting from 1 being the latest.
url
https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app/api/getHashnodeBlogBySequence?username=Souravdey777&sequence=1&large=true&theme=light
Response
getHashnodeBlogBySequence API response - latest blog card for Souravdey777, large, light theme

List of parameters

  • username= The Hashnode username of the blogger.
This is a mandatory parameter.
eg. souravdey777 this is my Hashnode username.
  • sequence= The serial no of the blog starting from 1 being the latest. Because of this parameter, the blogs will be changing when you add them to your website or Github profile whenever you add a new blog.
This is a mandatory parameter.
eg. souravdey777 this is my Hashnode username.
  • theme= The theme of the Card.
This is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is light. Other values are possible values are dark or blue
  • large= The size of the Card.
This is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is false. And when set to true gives a larger Card.

getLatestHashnodeBlog

This API endpoint will fetch a set of the latest blogs by the Hashnode username of the author and the limit up to which the blogs are needed
url
https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app/api/getLatestHashnodeBlog?username=Souravdey777&limit=3&large=true&theme=light
Response
getLatestHashnodeBlog API response - 3 latest blog cards for Souravdey777, large, light theme

List of parameters

  • username= The Hashnode username of the blogger.
This is a mandatory parameter.
eg. souravdey777 this is my Hashnode username.
  • limit= The no of the blog starting from the latest to the limit defined or all blogs you have if the no. of blogs you have is less than the limit defined.
It is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is 3. The maximum possible value is 6.
eg. souravdey777 this is my Hashnode username.
  • theme= The theme of the Card.
This is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is light. Other values are possible values are dark or blue
  • large= The size of the Card.
This is not a mandatory parameter and the default value is false. And when set to true gives a larger Card.

Themes

For theme=light

Blog card - light theme

For theme=dark

Blog card - dark theme

For theme=blue

Blog card - blue theme

Sizes

For large=true

Blog card - large size

For large=false

Blog card - small size

For 'img' tag custom size is defined with width and height attributes.

Embedding

Markdown Syntax

md
[![Hashnode Blog Card](https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app/api/API_ENDPOINT?PARAMS)](BLOG_URL)

HTML

html
<a href="BLOG_URL">
  <img
  src="https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app/api/getHashnodeBlog?url="https://hashnode-blog-cards.vercel.app/api/API_ENDPOINT?PARAMS"
  alt="Sourav Dey's Hashnode Blog Cards" />
</a>

My Journey with the Hashnode Blog Cards

I designed and created mockups for the cards first.
Figma design mockup for Hashnode Blog Cards
Exported the final SVG from figma.
Gone through the documentation of Nextjs.
Checked out the hashnode APIs with https://api.hashnode.com/ and @Sandeep Panda's blog
Created APIs to fetch the data from Hashnode APIs and made the SVG content dynamic.
This is how the APIs were created after that I deployed them in Vercel by importing the git repo.
Next, It was the API Playground website.
Edited Lottie Animation as per the color codes. Lottie animation editor screenshot for the loading animation
Then, it was all Reactjs.
And Yes It also has an error page for wrong links. 😉
Hashnode Blog Cards error page displayed for an invalid URL

Learnings

  • I have been using React for the last 2 years. And honestly, I was only using CRA but this is the first time I used Nextjs and because of that the deployment in Vercel was super smooth.
  • Lottiefiles. I used it for the first time and I loved it. I edited the animations with the Lottie design Editor and the assets on the website are from pixeltrue.
  • We often don't do proper code linting on our side projects. But This time I can proudly say I did it properly. Referred to this blog ESlint and Prettier for React apps

Dependencies

json
  "dependencies": {
    "axios": "^0.21.1",
    "next": "10.0.5",
    "prop-types": "^15.7.2",
    "react": "17.0.1",
    "react-dom": "17.0.1",
    "react-lottie": "^1.2.3"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "eslint": "^7.19.0",
    "eslint-config-prettier": "^7.2.0",
    "eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y": "^6.4.1",
    "eslint-plugin-prettier": "^3.3.1",
    "eslint-plugin-react": "^7.22.0",
    "eslint-plugin-react-hooks": "^4.2.0",
    "eslint-plugin-simple-import-sort": "^7.0.0",
    "prettier": "^2.2.1"
  }

What is next for the Hashnode blog Cards

I have to enhance a few things that I already have in mind.
  • PWA of the website
  • Markdown and HTML syntax generator or API
  • Horizontal Cards.
  • more themes
This API is for the Hashnode community so Please tell me what you all will prefer next in this.
Special thanks to @Sandeep Panda for the explanatory blog on Hashnode APIs. Click the card below and check out the blog.
Blog

License

📝 Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Contribution and Support

👨‍🚀 Contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.
Hope you Loved it! Do let me know in the comments.

Contact me