Rack::Fontserve

A simple Sinatra-based font hosting rack application that utilizes HTTP caching and Allow-Access-Control-Origin properly and generates the corresponding @font-face-CSS file on the fly.

Running standalone

Create a Gemfile:

source :rubygems
gem 'rack-fontserve'

Create a config.ru:

require 'bundler/setup'
require 'rack-fontserve'
Rack::Fontserve.set :fonts_path, './fonts'
run Rack::Fontserve

Create a directory ‘fonts’, place your fonts inside there in subfolders, where each font format file has the same name as the directory:

fonts/iconic_stroke/
  + iconic_stroke.eot
  + iconic_stroke.ttf
  + iconic_stroke.svg

That’s it! Run with rackup, push to heroku, or mount it in an existing Rails 3 app by adding rack-fontserve to your gemfile, setting the fonts path and mounting the app in your routes.rb file:

mount Rack::Fontserve, :at => "/fonts"

You can see a demo of all fonts in the fonts_path at the root page (/). To deactivate demo mode, use Rack::Fontserve.set :demo, false.

The font name is the name of the font’s directory, so in the above example, the font would be called ‘iconic_stroke’.

Custom font CSS

When a font_name.css file is found in the subdirectory, this file will be rendered instead of the auto-generated css. If you want to tweak your css settings, copy and paste the auto-generated css into such a file and customize it to your liking!

Incorporate font licenses into CSS

If you place a text file named LICENSE inside some font’s subdirectory, this file’s content will automatically be added as a CSS comment at the top of your auto-generated CSS. This won’t happen when using custom css, so make sure your custom css has the license added as you want it.

TODO

  • Improve the CSS syntax (kill unneccessary blank lines)

  • Make the scope selector for svg fonts configurable

  • Make the fall-back fonts configurable

  • Add an “all.css” action that aggregates all fonts into one file

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

  • Fork the project.

  • Make your feature addition or bug fix.

  • Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

  • Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

  • Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright © 2011 Christoph Olszowka. See LICENSE for details.