Gatsby Remark Lottie Plugin

A Gatsby remark plugin to embed Lottie JSON animations with SVG placeholders in your Markdown/MDX.

Read more about the motivation behind this plugin and a live demo.

Usage

npm install gatsby-remark-lottie

In gatsby-config.js:

module.exports = {
  plugins:[{
    resolve: "gatsby-transformer-remark",
      options: {
        plugins: ["gatsby-remark-lottie"]
      }
  }]
};

or if you are using MDX:

module.exports = {
  plugins:[{
    resolve: "gatsby-plugin-mdx",
      options: {
        gatsbyRemarkPlugins: ["gatsby-remark-lottie"]
      }
  }]
};

Then in your markdown/MDX:

Hi here is a cool animation:

![alt text](myanimation.json)

This assumes a myanimation.json lives next to your markdown/MDX file. The image will then be rendered as a static SVG for clients with scripts disabled and as a placeholder while the animation loads.

If you need some inspiration for JSON animation files, check out Lottie Files.

Options

The plugin takes a number of options that are shown here with their default values:

module.exports = {
  plugins:[{
    resolve: "gatsby-transformer-remark",
      options: {
        plugins: [{
          resolve: "gatsby-remark-lottie",
          options: {
            // Whether or not to generate static SVG placeholders.
            // If this is false, an empty div will render until
            // the lottie script starts the animation.
            generatePlaceholders: true,

            // lottie-web is loaded from CDN to start the animations.
            // This controls which version of the script is loaded.
            lottieVersion: "5.7.1",

            // The renderer to use (html, canvas, or svg). The static
            // placeholder will always be an SVG despite this value.
            // See the lottie-web docs: https://github.com/airbnb/lottie-web#html
            renderer: "svg",

            // Whether or not to loop the animation.
            // See the lottie-web docs: https://github.com/airbnb/lottie-web#html
            loop: true,

            // Whether or not to autoplay the animation on load.
            // See the lottie-web docs: https://github.com/airbnb/lottie-web#html
            autoplay: true
          }
        }]
      }
  }]
};

You can also pass rendererSettings to control lottie-web during the generation of the static placeholder SVG.

How It Works

This plugin makes use of lottie-to-svg to render the first frame of a lottie animation to an SVG which it then places into your HTML. When the page is loaded, the lottie script is loaded from CDN to replace the placeholder with the animation.

Based on the renderer you choose in the plugin's options, only the streamlined script for that renderer will be loaded. e.g. if you choose svg as your renderer, the lottie_svg.min.js file will be loaded.