Hello !
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 ?
Suddenly I found something called Google Shared Stuff that returns image with website's favicon by hostname:
http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.domain.com
But fot BBC site it returns favicon a bit small. Compare:
http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.bbc.co.uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/favicon.ico
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
Here are 3 options , I tested over 100 urls and got different results which each option.
<img height="16" width="16" src='http://getfavicon.appspot.com/http://www.edocuments.co.uk' />
<img height="16" width="16" src='http://www.getfavicon.org/?url=www.edocuments.co.uk' />
<img height="16" width="16" src='http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.edocuments.co.uk' />