Get website's favicon with JS

user_223386 0
Viewed 30341

I am wondering if it is possible to get a website's favicon by an URL with JavaScript.

For example I have an URL http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and I would like to get path to favicon described in <link rel="icon" .../> meta tag - http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico.

I have many URLs so that should not load every page and search for link tag I think.

Any ideas ?

favicon javascript
6 Answers
user_2233860

You could use YQL for that

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20url%3D"http://bbc.co.uk/"and%20xpath%3D"/html/head/link[@rel%3D'icon']%20|%20/html/head/link[@rel%3D'ICON']%20|%20/html/head/link[@rel%3D'shortcut%20icon']%20|%20/html/head/link[@rel%3D'SHORTCUT%20ICON']"&format=json&callback=grab

This query used by Display Feed Favicons Greasemonkey script.

You can write queries in YQL console, but it requires to login (btw, using queries don't):

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/#h=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20url%3D%22http%3A//bbc.co.uk/%22and%20xpath%3D%22/html/head/link%5B@rel%3D%27icon%27%5D%20%7C%20/html/head/link%5B@rel%3D%27ICON%27%5D%20%7C%20/html/head/link%5B@rel%3D%27shortcut%20icon%27%5D%20%7C%20/html/head/link%5B@rel%3D%27SHORTCUT%20ICON%27%5D%22

It is better than http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.domain.com , in case favicon exists, but doesn't located in domain.com/favicon.ico

user_161850

These days I thought that GitHub's service did a much better job than Google's:

https://favicons.githubusercontent.com/microsoft.com

Though neither are perfect it seems. For stackoverflow:

For GitHub:

Here is an article I wrote about a solution that can fetch favicons from multiple source.

Here is the source code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body style="background-color:grey;">
<script type="text/javascript">

const KRequestFaviconGitHub = 'https://favicons.githubusercontent.com/';
const KRequestFaviconGoogle = 'https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=';

const KDefaultUrl = KRequestFaviconGoogle;

// We rely on pre-defined hostname configurations
const hostnames = {
    "stackoverflow.com": { url:KRequestFaviconGoogle+"stackoverflow.com", invert:0 },
    "theregister.co.uk": { url:KRequestFaviconGoogle+"theregister.co.uk", invert:1 },
    "github.com": { url:KRequestFaviconGitHub+"github.com", invert:1 },
    "android.googlesource.com": { url:KRequestFaviconGoogle+"googlesource.com", invert:0 },
    "developer.android.com": { url:KRequestFaviconGitHub+"developer.android.com", invert:0 }
};

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(event) {

    addFavicon("stackoverflow.com");
    addFavicon("bbc.co.uk");
    addFavicon("github.com");
    addFavicon("theregister.co.uk");
    addFavicon("developer.android.com");
    addFavicon("android-doc.github.io");
    addFavicon("slions.net");
    addFavicon("alternate.de");
    addFavicon("amazon.de");
    addFavicon("microsoft.com");
    addFavicon("apple.com");
    addFavicon("googlesource.com");
    addFavicon("android.googlesource.com");
    addFavicon("firebase.google.com");
    addFavicon("play.google.com");
    addFavicon("google.com");
    addFavicon("team-mediaportal.com");
    addFavicon("caseking.de");
    addFavicon("developer.mozilla.org");
    addFavicon("theguardian.com");
    addFavicon("niche-beauty.com");
    addFavicon("octobre-editions.com");
    addFavicon("dw.com");
    addFavicon("douglas.com");
    addFavicon("douglas.de");
    addFavicon("www.sncf.fr");
    addFavicon("paris.fr");
    addFavicon("bahn.de");
    addFavicon("hopfully.that.domain.does.not.exists.nowaythisisavaliddomain.fart");

});

/**
*
*/
function addFavicon(aDomain)
{
    var a = document.createElement("a");
    a.href = "http://" + aDomain;
    //a.style.display = "block";
    var div = document.createElement("div");
    div.innerText = aDomain;
    div.style.verticalAlign = "middle";
    div.style.display = "inline-block";
    var img = document.createElement("img");
    img.className = "link-favicon";
    img.style.width = "16px";
    img.style.height = "16px";
    img.style.verticalAlign = "middle";
    img.style.display = "inline-block";
    img.style.marginRight = "4px";
    a.prepend(img);
    a.appendChild(div);
    document.body.appendChild(a);
    document.body.appendChild(document.createElement("p"));

    const conf = hostnames[aDomain]
    if (conf==null)
    {
        img.src = KDefaultUrl+aDomain;
    }
    else
    {
        img.src = conf.url;
        img.style.filter = "invert(" + conf.invert + ")";
    }
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
user_39693620
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