besticon

README

favicon-service (besticon)

Source of https://icons.better-idea.org, a favicon service:

• Supports favicon.ico and apple-touch-icon.png
• Simple URL API
• Fallback icon generation
• Single binary download for easy self-hosting

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	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.

Examples

Input URL	Icon
https://icons.better-idea.org/icon?url=yelp.com&size=32..50..120
https://icons.better-idea.org/icon?url=yelp.com&size=64..64..120
https://icons.better-idea.org/icon?url=yelp.com	size missing
https://icons.better-idea.org/icon?url=httpbin.org/status/404&size=32..64..120
https://icons.better-idea.org/icon?url=httpbin.org/status/404&size=32..64..120&fallback_icon_color=ff0000
https://icons.better-idea.org/icon?url=фминобрнауки.рф&size=32..64..120

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	png,ico,gif

Examples

• https://icons.better-idea.org/allicons.json?url=github.com
• https://icons.better-idea.org/allicons.json?url=github.com&formats=png

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/mat/besticon/issues.

Self Hosting

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.

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://icons.better-idea.org and therefore not well tested.

Server Executable

Download binaries

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

Build your own

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/...

Running

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

Configuration

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

Libraries etc.

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

Contributors

• Erkie - https://github.com/erkie
• mmkal - https://github.com/mmkal

License

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.

Donate

If you find this useful and want to donate... you would make my day :-)