How to get char code of fontawesome icon? - svg

Question

I'd like to use fontawesome icons in SVG scope. I cannot achieve it in common way, but I can add <text> element containing corresponding UTF-8 char and with font set to fontawesome, like that:
<text style="font-family: FontAwesome;">\uf0ac</text>
To make it clear I wrote a switch for getting useful icons:
getFontAwesomeIcon(name) {
switch (name) {
case 'fa-globe':
return '\uf0ac'
case 'fa-lock':
return '\uf023'
case 'fa-users':
return '\uf0c0'
case 'fa-ellipsis-h':
return '\uf141'
default:
throw '# Wrong fontawesome icon name.'
}
}
But of course that's ugly, because I must write it myself im my code. How can I get these values just from fontawesome library?

Answer 1

You can avoid producing such a list and extract the information from the font-awesome stylesheet on the fly. Include the stylesheet and set the classes like usual, i. e.
<tspan class="fa fa-globe"></tspan>
and you can do the following:
var icons = document.querySelectorAll(".fa");
var stylesheet = Array.from(document.styleSheets).find(function (s) {
return s.href.endsWith("font-awesome.css");
});
var rules = Array.from(stylesheet.cssRules);
icons.forEach(function (icon) {
// extract the class name for the icon
var name = Array.from(icon.classList).find(function (c) {
return c.startsWith('fa-');
});
// get the ::before styles for that class
var style = rules.find(function (r) {
return r.selectorText && r.selectorText.endsWith(name + "::before");
}).style;
// insert the content into the element
// style.content returns '"\uf0ac"'
icon.textContent = style.content.substr(1,1);
});

Answer 2

My two answers for two approaches to the problem (both developed thanks to ccprog):
1. Setting char by class definition:
In that approach we can define element that way:
<text class="fa fa-globe"></text>
And next run that code:
var icons = document.querySelectorAll("text.fa");
// I want to modify only icons in SVG text elements
var stylesheets = Array.from(document.styleSheets);
// In my project FontAwesome styles are compiled with other file,
// so I search for rules in all CSS files
// Getting rules from stylesheets is slightly more complicated:
var rules = stylesheets.map(function(ss) {
return ss && ss.cssRules ? Array.from(ss.cssRules) : [];
})
rules = [].concat.apply([], rules);
// Rest the same:
icons.forEach(function (icon) {
var name = Array.from(icon.classList).find(function (c) {
return c.startsWith('fa-');
});
var style = rules.find(function (r) {
return r.selectorText && r.selectorText.endsWith(name + "::before");
}).style;
icon.textContent = style.content.substr(1,1);
});
But I had some problems with that approach, so I developed the second one.
2. Getting char with function:
const getFontAwesomeIconChar = (name) => {
var stylesheets = Array.from(document.styleSheets);
var rules = stylesheets.map(function(ss) {
return ss && ss.cssRules ? Array.from(ss.cssRules) : [];
})
rules = [].concat.apply([], rules);
var style = rules.find(function (r) {
return r.selectorText && r.selectorText.endsWith(name + "::before");
}).style;
return style.content.substr(1,1);
}
Having that funcion defined we can do something like this (example with React syntax):
<text>{getFontAwesomeIconChar('fa-globe')}</text>