A Laravel package that can be used for fetching favicons from websites

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Installation
  • Requirements
  • Install the Package
  • Publish the Config
• Usage
  • Fetching Favicons
    • Using the fetch Method
    • Using the fetchOr Method
  • Exceptions
  • Drivers
  • Available Drivers
    • How to Choose a Driver
  • Choosing a Driver
    • Fallback Drivers
    • Adding Your Own Driver
  • Storing Favicons
    • Using store
    • Using storeAs
  • Caching Favicons
• Testing
• Security
• Contribution
• Changelog
• Credits
• License

Overview

A Laravel package that can be used for fetching favicons from websites.

Installation

Requirements

The package has been developed and tested to work with the following minimum requirements:

• PHP 8.0
• Laravel 8.0

Install the Package

You can install the package via Composer:

composer require ashallendesign/favicon-fetcher

Publish the Config

You can then publish the package's config file by using the following command:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\FaviconFetcherProvider"

Usage

Fetching Favicons

Now that you have the package installed, you can start fetching the favicons from different websites.

Using the fetch Method

To fetch a favicon from a website, you can use the fetch method which will return an instance of AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Favicon:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk');

Using the fetchOr Method

If you'd like to provide a default value to be used if a favicon cannot be found, you can use the fetchOr method.

For example, if you wanted to use a default icon (https://example.com/favicon.ico) if a favicon could not be found, your code could look something like this:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::fetchOr('https://ashallendesign.co.uk', 'https://example.com/favicon.ico');

This method also accepts a Closure as the second argument if you'd prefer to run some custom logic. The url field passed as the first argument to the fetchOr method is available to use in the closure. For example, to use a closure, your code could look something like this:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::fetchOr('https://ashallendesign.co.uk', function ($url) {
    // Run extra logic here...

    return 'https://example.com/favicon.ico';
});

Exceptions

By default, if a favicon can't be found for a URL, the fetch method will return null. However, if you'd prefer an exception to be thrown, you can use the throw method available on the Favicon facade. This means that if a favicon can't be found, an AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Exceptions\FaviconNotFoundException will be thrown.

To enable exceptions to be thrown, your code could look something like this:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::throw()->fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk');

Drivers

Favicon Fetcher provides the functionality to use different drivers for retrieving favicons from websites.

Available Drivers

By default, Favicon Fetcher ships with 4 drivers out-the-box: http, google-shared-stuff, favicon-kit, unavatar.

The http driver fetches favicons by attempting to parse "icon" and "shortcut icon" link elements from the returned HTML of a webpage. If it can't find one, it will attempt to guess the URL of the favicon based on common defaults.

The google-shared-stuff driver fetches favicons using the Google Shared Stuff API.

The favicon-kit driver fetches favicons using the Favicon Kit API.

The unavatar driver fetches favicons using the Unavatar API.

How to Choose a Driver

It's important to remember that the google-shared-stuff, favicon-kit, and unavatar drivers interact with third-party APIs to retrieve the favicons. So, this means that some data will be shared to external services.

However, the http driver does not use any external services and directly queries the website that you are trying to fetch the favicon for. Due to the fact that this package is new, it is likely that the http driver may not be 100% accurate when trying to fetch favicons from websites. So, theoretically, the http driver should provide you with better privacy, but may not be as accurate as the other drivers.

Choosing a Driver

You can select which driver to use by default by changing the default field in the favicon-fetcher config file after you've published it. The package originally ships with the http driver enabled as the default driver.

For example, if you wanted to change your default driver to favicon-kit, you could update your favicon-fetcher config like so:

return [

    // ...
        
    'default' => 'favicon-kit',
            
    // ...

]

If you'd like to set the driver on-the-fly, you can do so by using the driver method on the Favicon facade. For example, if you wanted to use the google-shared-stuff driver, you could do so like this:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::driver('google-shared-stuff')->fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk');

Fallback Drivers

There may be times when a particular driver cannot find a favicon for a website. If this happens, you can fall back and attempt to find it again using a different driver.

For example, if we wanted to try and fetch the favicon using the http driver and then fall back to the google-shared-stuff driver if we can't find it, your code could look something like this:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::withFallback('google-shared-stuff')->fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk');

Adding Your Own Driver

There might be times when you want to provide your own custom logic for fetching favicons. To do this, you can build your driver and register it with the package for using.

First, you'll need to create your own class and make sure that it implements the AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Contracts\Fetcher interface. For example, your class could like this:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Contracts\Fetcher;
use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Favicon;

class MyCustomDriver implements Fetcher
{
    public function fetch(string $url): ?Favicon
    {
        // Add logic here that attempts to fetch a favicon...
    }

    public function fetchOr(string $url, mixed $default): mixed
    {
        // Add logic here that attempts to fetch a favicon or return a default...
    }
}

After you've created your new driver, you'll be able to register it with the package using the extend method available through the Favicon facade. You may want to do this in a service provider so that it is set up and available in the rest of your application.

You can register your custom driver like so:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

Favicon::extend('my-custom-driver', new MyCustomDriver());

Now that you've registered your custom driver, you'll be able to use it for fetching favicons like so:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$favicon = Favicon::driver('my-custom-driver')->fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk');

Storing Favicons

After fetching favicons, you might want to store them in your filesystem so that you don't need to fetch them again in the future. Favicon Fetcher provides two methods that you can use for storing the favicons: store and storeAs.

Using store

If you use the store method, a filename will automatically be generated for the favicon before storing. The method's first parameter accepts a string and is the directory that the favicon will be stored in. You can store a favicon using your default filesystem disk like so:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$faviconPath = Favicon::fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk')->store('favicons');

// $faviconPath is now equal to: "/favicons/abc-123.ico"

If you'd like to use a different storage disk, you can pass it as an optional second argument to the store method. For example, to store the favicon on S3, your code use the following:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$faviconPath = Favicon::fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk')->store('favicons', 's3');

// $faviconPath is now equal to: "/favicons/abc-123.ico"

Using storeAs

If you use the storeAs method, you will be able to define the filename that the file will be stored as. The method's first parameter accepts a string and is the directory that the favicon will be stored in. The second parameter specifies the favicon filename (excluding the file extension). You can store a favicon using your default filesystem disk like so:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$faviconPath = Favicon::fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk')->storeAs('favicons', 'ashallendesign');

// $faviconPath is now equal to: "/favicons/ashallendesign.ico"

If you'd like to use a different storage disk, you can pass it as an optional third argument to the storeAs method. For example, to store the favicon on S3, your code use the following:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$faviconPath = Favicon::fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk')->storeAs('favicons', 'ashallendesign', 's3');

// $faviconPath is now equal to: "/favicons/ashallendesign.ico"

Caching Favicons

As well as being able to store favicons, the package also allows you to cache the favicon URLs. This can be extremely useful if you don't want to store a local copy of the file and want to use the external version of the favicon that the website uses.

As a basic example, if you have a page displaying 50 websites and their favicons, we would need to find the favicon's URL on each page load. As can imagine, this would drastically increase the page load time. So, by retrieving the URLs from the cache, it would majorly improve up the page speed.

To cache a favicon, you can use the cache method available on the Favicon class. The first parameter accepts a Carbon\CarbonInterface as the cache lifetime. For example, to cache the favicon URL of https://ashallendesign.co.uk for 1 day, your code might look something like:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$faviconPath = Favicon::fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk')->cache(now()->addDay());

By default, the package will always try and resolve the favicon from the cache before attempting to retrieve a fresh version. However, if you want to disable the cache and always retrieve a fresh version, you can use the useCache method like so:

use AshAllenDesign\FaviconFetcher\Facades\Favicon;

$faviconPath = Favicon::useCache(false)->fetch('https://ashallendesign.co.uk');

The package uses favicon-fetcher as a prefix for all the cache keys. If you'd like to change this, you can do so by changing the cache.prefix field in the favicon-fethcher config file. For example, to change the prefix to my-awesome-prefix, you could update your config file like so:

return [

    // ...
        
    'cache' => [
        'prefix' => 'my-awesome-prefix',
    ]
            
    // ...

]

Testing

To run the package's unit tests, run the following command:

composer test

To run Larastan for the package, run the following command:

composer larastan

Security

If you find any security related issues, please contact me directly at [email protected] to report it.

Contribution

If you wish to make any changes or improvements to the package, feel free to make a pull request.

To contribute to this package, please use the following guidelines before submitting your pull request:

• Write tests for any new functions that are added. If you are updating existing code, make sure that the existing tests pass and write more if needed.
• Follow PSR-12 coding standards.
• Make all pull requests to the master branch.

Changelog

Check the CHANGELOG to get more information about the latest changes.

Credits

• Ash Allen
• Jess Pickup (Logo)
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.