Question

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 path = require('path')

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

// Add your routes here, etc.

app.listen(3000)

connect

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

var app = connect()
app.use(favicon(path.join(__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 path = require('path')

var _favicon = favicon(path.join(__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)