Source of https://icons.better-idea.org, a favicon service:
- Supports
favicon.ico
andapple-touch-icon.png
- Simple URL API
- Fallback icon generation
- Single binary download for easy self-hosting
Websites used to have a favicon.ico
, or not. With the introduction of the apple-touch-icon.png
finding “the icon” for a website became more complicated. This service finds and — if necessary — generates icons for web sites.
This endpoint always returns an icon image for the given site — it redirects to an official icon if possible or creates and returns a fallback image if needed.
Parameter | Example | Description | Default |
---|---|---|---|
url | http://yelp.com | required | |
size | 32..50..100 | Desired size range (min..perfect..max) If no image of size perfect..max nor perfect..min can be found a fallback icon will be generated. | required |
formats | png,ico | Comma-separated list of accepted image formats: png, ico, gif | png,ico,gif |
fallback_icon_url | HTTP image URL | If provided, a redirect to this image will be returned in case no suitable icon could be found. This overrides the default fallback image behaviour. | |
fallback_icon_color | ff0000 | If provided, letter icons will be colored with the hex value provided, rather than be grey, when no color can be found for any icon. |
This endpoint returns all icons for a given site.
Parameter | Example | Description | Default |
---|---|---|---|
url | http://yelp.com | required | |
formats | png,ico | Comma-separated list of accepted image formats: png, ico, gif | png,ico,gif |
- https://icons.better-idea.org/allicons.json?url=github.com
- https://icons.better-idea.org/allicons.json?url=github.com&formats=png
I tried hard to make this useful but please note there are some known limitations:
- Poor i18n support for letter icons (#13)
Feel free to file other bugs - and offer your help - at https://github.com/mat/besticon/issues.
It is recommended to use your own copy of this service if you plan to rely on it in your project. An easy way to host your own copy is to use Heroku, just go to https://heroku.com/deploy to get started.
A docker image is available at https://hub.docker.com/r/matthiasluedtke/iconserver/, generated from the Dockerfile in this repo. I try to keep it updated for every release.
Note that this docker image is not used to run https://icons.better-idea.org and therefore not well tested.
Binaries for some operating systems can be downloaded from https://github.com/mat/besticon/releases/latest
Even more binaries are available from the excellent GoBuilder community site https://gobuilder.me/github.com/mat/besticon/besticon/iconserver
If you have Go 1.7 installed on your system you can use go get
to fetch the source code and build the server:
$ go get -u github.com/mat/besticon/...
If you want to build executables for a different target operating system you can add the GOOS
and GOARCH
environment variables:
$ GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go get -u github.com/mat/besticon/...
To start the server on default port 8080 just do
$ iconserver
To use a different port use
$ PORT=80 iconserver
Now when you open http://localhost:8080/icons?url=instagram.com you should see something like
There is not a lot to configure but these environment variables exist
Variable | Description | Default Value |
---|---|---|
PORT |
HTTP server port | 8080 |
CACHE_SIZE_MB |
Size for the groupcache | 32 |
HOST_ONLY_DOMAINS |
Comma-separated list of domains where requests for http://example.com/foobar will be rewritten to http://example.com. HOST_ONLY_DOMAINS used by https://icons.better-idea.org. See #27. |
Package | Description | License |
---|---|---|
http://github.com/NYTimes/gziphandler | net/http gzip compression | Apache License, Version 2.0 |
http://github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery | BSD style | |
http://github.com/andybalholm/cascadia | CSS selectors | License |
http://github.com/golang/groupcache | Apache License 2.0 | |
http://github.com/golang/protobuf | License | |
http://github.com/golang/freetype | FreeType License | |
http://golang.org/x/image | supplementary image libraries | BSD style |
http://golang.org/x/net | BSD style | |
http://golang.org/x/text | BSD style | |
Noto Sans font used for the generated icons | SIL Open Font License 1.1 | |
The icon used on icons.better-idea.org | License |
- Erkie - https://github.com/erkie
- mmkal - https://github.com/mmkal
- kspearrin - https://github.com/kspearrin
MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2015-2017 Matthias Lüdtke, Hamburg - https://github.com/mat
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
If you find this useful and want to donate... you would make my day :-)