serve-favicon

What is serve-favicon?

The serve-favicon npm package is a middleware for serving a favicon, a small icon associated with a particular website or web page. It is commonly used in Node.js applications to define and serve the favicon efficiently, handling caching and other concerns.

What are serve-favicon's main functionalities?

Serving a favicon

This code sample demonstrates how to use serve-favicon to serve a favicon from a specified path in an Express.js application. The favicon.ico file is located in the 'public' directory, and the middleware is set up to serve it.

const express = require('express');
const favicon = require('serve-favicon');
const path = require('path');

const app = express();
app.use(favicon(path.join(__dirname, 'public', 'favicon.ico')));

app.listen(3000);

Caching

This code sample shows how to set a cache-control max-age directive for the favicon, which tells browsers to cache the favicon for a specified amount of time (in this case, 30 days).

const express = require('express');
const favicon = require('serve-favicon');
const path = require('path');

const app = express();
app.use(favicon(path.join(__dirname, 'public', 'favicon.ico'), { maxAge: 2592000000 }));

app.listen(3000);

Other packages similar to serve-favicon

static-favicon

Similar to serve-favicon, static-favicon was used to serve favicon files. However, it is now deprecated in favor of serve-favicon, which is more up-to-date and maintained.

express-favicon

This is another package that can be used to serve favicons in Express applications. It is less popular and not as actively maintained as serve-favicon, which is the more commonly recommended package for this purpose.

connect-favicons

Connect-favicons is a middleware for Connect and Express that serves favicons. It is an alternative to serve-favicon but has fewer downloads and less frequent updates, suggesting that serve-favicon is the preferred choice for most developers.

README

serve-favicon

Node.js middleware for serving a favicon.

A favicon is a visual cue that client software, like browsers, use to identify a site. For an example and more information, please visit the Wikipedia article on favicons.

Why use this module?

• User agents request favicon.ico frequently and indiscriminately, so you may wish to exclude these requests from your logs by using this middleware before your logger middleware.
• This module caches the icon in memory to improve performance by skipping disk access.
• This module provides an ETag based on the contents of the icon, rather than file system properties.
• This module will serve with the most compatible Content-Type.

Note This module is exclusively for serving the "default, implicit favicon", which is GET /favicon.ico. For additional vendor-specific icons that require HTML markup, additional middleware is required to serve the relevant files, for example serve-static.

Install

This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry. Installation is done using the npm install command:

npm install serve-favicon

API

favicon(path, options)

Create new middleware to serve a favicon from the given path to a favicon file. path may also be a Buffer of the icon to serve.

Options

Serve favicon accepts these properties in the options object.

maxAge

The cache-control max-age directive in ms, defaulting to 1 year. This can also be a string accepted by the ms module.

Examples

Typically this middleware will come very early in your stack (maybe even first) to avoid processing any other middleware if we already know the request is for /favicon.ico.

express

var express = require('express');
var favicon = require('serve-favicon');

var app = express();
app.use(favicon(__dirname + '/public/favicon.ico'));

// Add your routes here, etc.

app.listen(3000);

connect

var connect = require('connect');
var favicon = require('serve-favicon');

var app = connect();
app.use(favicon(__dirname + '/public/favicon.ico'));

// Add your middleware here, etc.

app.listen(3000);

vanilla http server

This middleware can be used anywhere, even outside express/connect. It takes req, res, and callback.

var http = require('http');
var favicon = require('serve-favicon');
var finalhandler = require('finalhandler');

var _favicon = favicon(__dirname + '/public/favicon.ico');

var server = http.createServer(function onRequest(req, res) {
  var done = finalhandler(req, res);

  _favicon(req, res, function onNext(err) {
    if (err) return done(err);

    // continue to process the request here, etc.

    res.statusCode = 404;
    res.end('oops');
  });
});

server.listen(3000);

License

MIT