Text cards

Not every list has pictures. A list of laws, council decisions or news is only text. An item without image is a text card: the wall draws it itself, on a canvas, from the item’s text. No image is requested.

Text cards and picture cards mix freely in one feed. A text card is a normal item, so search, filters, paging and actions work the same.

What a text card needs

An item needs id and link, and either image with aspect, or a title. An item with neither image nor title is invalid.

{
  "id": "41",
  "link": "/decisions/41",
  "title": "Decision 41 on the municipal budget",
  "subtitle": "Municipal council",
  "badges": ["Budget"],
  "excerpt": "The council adopts the budget for 2027. The annexes list the capital projects.",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "accent": "#7a1f2b"
}

Field	What the wall does with it
title	Drawn largest. Required on a text card.
subtitle	Drawn under the title, for example the issuer or the municipality.
badges	The first badge is the kicker (the category) on the card’s top band.
excerpt	Plain text, at most 500 characters, drawn under the title. The card shows as many lines as fit and ends with an ellipsis. The viewer shows more of it.
date	An ISO 8601 date or date-time, drawn small at the bottom as a short date in the visitor’s language.
accent	#rgb or #rrggbb: the colour of the top band. Absent means the site’s accent from the view or the brand.
aspect	Optional on a text card. Absent means 0.75, a portrait 3:4 card.

The card’s colours follow the site’s theme, so a light brand gives light cards. The text is drawn on a canvas at 512 px on the wall and 1024 px in the viewer, with the site’s font, so Cyrillic and other scripts work.

An item with a picture keeps its picture

An item with image is drawn as before. If its picture cannot be loaded, the wall tries once more and then shows the same text card, built from the item’s title. A good title is therefore worth sending with every item.

From the adapters

• JSON feed. Send the fields above. JsonFeedAdapter and WellKnownAdapter keep text cards and drop an item with neither image nor title.
• RSS and Atom. An entry without a picture becomes a text card: its description (as plain text) is the excerpt, its publication date is the date. See Adapters.
• Annotations (Level 1). An item without an image becomes a text card when it has a data-wall-title element. Add data-wall-excerpt on an element, and data-wall-date and data-wall-accent on the item.
• Laravel and WordPress. See Laravel plugin and WordPress plugin.

Note

Recipes (Level 0) still need an image field. A recipe for a list with no pictures is not supported yet.