The Best Way to Embed a Tweet in a React Application

Social media integration has become indispensable to web development in today's digital age. Embedding X/Twitter posts on your website can be a great way to engage with your audience and share valuable content. This blog post will discuss how to embed a Twitter post on your website and introduce you to a helpful tool called "react-tweet" that simplifies the process.

Why Embed Twitter Posts?

Embedding Twitter posts on your website can offer several benefits:

1. Increased Engagement: Twitter is a popular platform, and embedding tweets can encourage your website visitors to interact with the content.

2. Enhanced Content: Twitter is an excellent source of real-time updates and conversations. Embedding tweets lets you include the latest news and opinions in your content.

3. Credibility: Sharing tweets from authoritative accounts or experts in your field can boost your website's credibility and establish your expertise.

There are several methods to embed a Twitter post in your website that we will go through one by one.

The first approach is to use what X itself has natively provided.

Step 1: Find the Tweet/Post

• Go to the tweet/Post you want to embed on Twitter.

• Click on the three dots (more options) at the tweet's top.

• Select "Embed Post" from the menu. You will be redirected to a website, which is basically https://publish.twitter.com/ .

Step 2: Get the Embed Code

• Customize the appearance of the embedded tweet using the available options, such as choosing a light or dark theme and the language you want to display.

• Copy the provided HTML code by clicking on the Copy Code button.

Step 3: Embed in Your Website

• Paste the copied HTML code into the HTML source code of your website at the desired location.

• Save and update your webpage, and the embedded tweet will appear.

However, this is not an ideal way to embed an X/twitter post in your website. I suggest using the react-tweet component built by vercel.

react-tweet allows you to embed tweets in your React, Next.js, Create React App, and Vite, applications. The library does not require using the Twitter API and the best thing about it is that tweets can be rendered statically, preventing the need to include an iframe and additional client-side JavaScript. It basically has the following benefits over the Twitter/X’s embedding approach:

1. This library has 35x less client-side JavaScript code then Twitter’s iframe

2. This library is fully compatible with React Server Components

3. It works with Next.js, Create React App, Vite, and more

react-tweet Installation

Install react-tweet using your package manager of choice:

pnpm add react-tweet

yarn add react-tweet

npm install react-tweet

Now follow the usage instructions for your framework or builder:

• Next.js
• Vite
• Create React App

For the sake of this example we will be using Next.js

Note: Next.js 13.2.1 or higher is required in order to use react-tweet

Usage

In any component, import Tweet from react-tweet and use it like so:

import { Tweet } from 'react-tweet'

export default function Page() {
  return <Tweet id="1697514977672769967" />  // replace id with your own tweet id
}

If you are using this library inside a Next.js application please remember the component does not make use of the Next.js Image component. However, you can customize it.

Choosing a theme

The closest data-theme attribute on a parent element can determine the theme of the tweet. You can set it to light or dark, like so:

<div data-theme="dark">
  <Tweet id="1697514977672769967" />
</div>

Alternatively, a parent with the class light or dark will also work:

<div className="dark">
  <Tweet id="1697514977672769967" />
</div>

In conclusion, embedding Twitter posts on your website is a simple and effective way to improve your content quality, engage with your audience, and increase your website's credibility. You can easily integrate tweets into your web projects by following the official Twitter embedding method or by using the React Tweet library. You can choose the method that best meets your requirements and start sharing the latest tweets with your website visitors today.