favicon-service (besticon)
This is a favicon service:
- Supports
favicon.ico
and apple-touch-icon.png
- Simple URL API
- Fallback icon generation
- Docker image & single binary download for easy hosting
Try out the demo at https://besticon-demo.herokuapp.com or find out how to deploy your own version right now.
What's this?
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.
API
GET /icon
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, jpg |
gif,ico,jpg,png,svg |
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. |
|
Examples
GET /allicons.json
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, jpg |
png,ico,gif,jpg |
Examples
Bugs & limitations
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/sertifier/besticon/issues.
Hosting
Simple options to host this service are, for example:
Docker
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://besticon-demo.herokuapp.com and therefore not well tested.
Monitoring
Prometheus metrics are exposed under /metrics. A Grafana dashboard config based on these metrics can be found in grafana-dashboard.json.
Server Executable
Download binaries
Binaries for some operating systems can be downloaded from https://github.com/sertifier/besticon/releases/latest
Build your own
If you have Go installed on your system you can use go get
to fetch the source code and build the server:
$ go get -u github.com/sertifier/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/sertifier/besticon/...
Running
To start the server on default port 8080 just do
$ iconserver
To use a different port use
$ PORT=80 iconserver
To listen on a different address (say localhost) use
$ ADDRESS=127.0.0.1 iconserver
To enable CORS headers you need to set CORS_ENABLED=true
. Optionally, you can set additional environment variables which will be passed as options to the rs/cors middleware.
$ CORS_ENABLED=true iconserver
Now when you open http://localhost:8080/icons?url=instagram.com you should see something like
Configuration
There is not a lot to configure, but these environment variables exist
Variable |
Description |
Default Value |
ADDRESS |
HTTP server listen address |
0.0.0.0 |
CACHE_SIZE_MB |
Size for the groupcache, set to 0 to disable |
32 |
CORS_ENABLED |
Enables the rs/cors middleware |
false |
CORS_ALLOWED_HEADERS |
Comma-separated, passed to middleware |
|
CORS_ALLOWED_METHODS |
Comma-separated, passed to middleware |
|
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS |
Comma-separated, passed to middleware |
|
CORS_ALLOW_CREDENTIALS |
Boolean, passed to middleware |
|
CORS_DEBUG |
Boolean, passed to middleware |
|
DISABLE_BROWSE_PAGES |
Boolean, if true, the server will not serve any of the HTML pages |
false |
HOST_ONLY_DOMAINS |
|
* |
HTTP_CLIENT_TIMEOUT |
Timeout used for HTTP requests. Supports units like ms, s, m. |
5s |
HTTP_MAX_AGE_DURATION |
Cache duration for all dynamically generated HTTP responses. Supports units like ms, s, m. |
720h (30 days) |
HTTP_USER_AGENT |
User-Agent used for HTTP requests |
iPhone user agent string |
METRICS_PATH |
Path at which the Prometheus metrics are served. Set to disable to disable Prometheus metrics |
/metrics |
POPULAR_SITES |
Comma-separated list of domains used on /popular page |
some random web sites |
PORT |
HTTP server port |
8080 |
SERVER_MODE |
Set to download to proxy downloads through besticon or redirect to let browser to download instead. (example at #40) |
redirect |
Contributors
License
MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2015-2020 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.
Donate
If you find this useful and want to donate... you would make my day :-)