google-webfonts-helper

A Hassle-Free Way to Self-Host Google Fonts

✅ https://gwfh.mranftl.com is the new base url!
❌ https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com (shut down 2022-11-27)

• google-webfonts-helper
  • Give it a try: https://gwfh.mranftl.com
  • Development
    • Quickstart
    • Production build
    • Updating dependencies
  • JSON API
    • GET /api/fonts
    • GET /api/fonts/[id]?subsets=latin,latin-ext
    • GET /api/fonts/[id]?download=zip&subsets=latin&formats=woff,woff2&variants=regular
  • History
  • License

This service might be handy if you want to host a specific Google font on your own server:

• font style and charset customization
• CSS snippets
• .eot, .woff, .woff2, .svg, .ttf font file formats download (zipped).

Give it a try: https://gwfh.mranftl.com

Development

Quickstart

Do this to setup a development environment:

# Ensure to set the GOOGLE_FONTS_API_KEY env var inside your own gitignored .env file
# See https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/developer_api for creating your own API-Key.
echo "GOOGLE_FONTS_API_KEY=<YOUR-API-KEY>" > .env

# Start up the development docker container (multistage Dockerfile, stage 1 only)
./docker-helper.sh --up
# [+] Running 1/0
#  ⠿ Container gwfh-service-1  Running
# node@3b506a285f7f:/app$

# within this development container:
node$ npm install -d
node$ ./node_modules/.bin/bower install

# start development server
node$ grunt serve

# start development server with debug statements enabled:
node$ DEBUG="gwfh*" grunt serve
# [...]
# Express server listening on 9000, in development mode

# The application is now available at http://127.0.0.1:9000 (watching for code changes)

# start production server (same command as within the final docker multistage build)
node$ grunt build
node$ NODE_ENV=production node dist/server/app.js
# Express server listening on 8080, in production mode

Production build

If you simply want to build and run the production container locally:

# Build the production docker container (final stage)
docker build . -t <your-image-tag>

# Run it (if you have previously started the development container, halt it!)
./docker-helper.sh --halt
docker run -e GOOGLE_FONTS_API_KEY=<YOUR-API-KEY> -p 8080:8080 <your-image-tag>
# Express server listening on 8080, in production mode

To mitigate security issues especially with the projects' deprecated dependencies, the final image is based on a minimal container image (distroless). It runs rootless, has no shell available and no development dependencies.

Updating dependencies

Note these old npm clients produce non-deterministic installs (no support for proper lockfiles or npm ci).

If you try to upgrade any dependencies within package.json, ensure that npm-shrinkwrap.json stays stable by trying out:

# after npm install <package> --save or npm install <package> --save-dev do:
npm shrinkwrap --dev

JSON API

The API is public, feel free to use it directly (rate-limits may apply).

GET /api/fonts

Returns a list of all fonts, sorted by popularity. E.g. curl https://gwfh.mranftl.com/api/fonts:

[{
  "id": "open-sans",
  "family": "Open Sans",
  "variants": ["300", "300italic", "regular", "italic", "600", "600italic", "700", "700italic", "800", "800italic"],
  "subsets": ["devanagari", "greek", "latin", "cyrillic-ext", "cyrillic", "greek-ext", "vietnamese", "latin-ext"],
  "category": "sans-serif",
  "version": "v10",
  "lastModified": "2014-10-17",
  "popularity": 1,
  "defSubset": "latin",
  "defVariant": "regular"
} [...]
]

GET /api/fonts/[id]?subsets=latin,latin-ext

Returns a font with urls to the actual font files google's servers. subsets is optional (will serve the defSubset if unspecified). E.g. curl "https://gwfh.mranftl.com/api/fonts/modern-antiqua?subsets=latin,latin-ext" (the double quotes are important as query parameters may else be stripped!):

{
  "id": "modern-antiqua",
  "family": "Modern Antiqua",
  "variants": [{
    "id": "regular",
    "eot": "https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/modernantiqua/v6/8qX_tr6Xzy4t9fvZDXPkhzThM-TJeMvVB0dIsYy4U7E.eot",
    "fontFamily": "'Modern Antiqua'",
    "fontStyle": "normal",
    "fontWeight": "400",
    "woff": "https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/modernantiqua/v6/8qX_tr6Xzy4t9fvZDXPkh1bbnkJREviNM815YSrb1io.woff",
    "local": ["Modern Antiqua Regular", "ModernAntiqua-Regular"],
    "ttf": "https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/modernantiqua/v6/8qX_tr6Xzy4t9fvZDXPkhxr_S_FdaWWVbb1LgBbjq4o.ttf",
    "svg": "https://fonts.gstatic.com/l/font?kit=8qX_tr6Xzy4t9fvZDXPkh0sAoW0rAsWAgyWthbXBUKs#ModernAntiqua",
    "woff2": "https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/modernantiqua/v6/8qX_tr6Xzy4t9fvZDXPkh08GHjg64nS_BBLu6wRo0k8.woff2"
  }],
  "subsets": ["latin", "latin-ext"],
  "category": "display",
  "version": "v6",
  "lastModified": "2014-08-28",
  "popularity": 522,
  "defSubset": "latin",
  "defVariant": "regular",
  "subsetMap": {
    "latin": true,
    "latin-ext": true
  },
  "storeID": "latin-ext_latin"
}

GET /api/fonts/[id]?download=zip&subsets=latin&formats=woff,woff2&variants=regular

Download a zipped archive with all .eot, .woff, .woff2, .svg, .ttf files of a specified font. The query parameters formats and variants are optional (includes everything if no filtering is applied). is E.g. curl -o fontfiles.zip "https://gwfh.mranftl.com/api/fonts/lato?download=zip&subsets=latin,latin-ext&variants=regular,700&formats=woff" (the double quotes are important as query parameters may else be stripped!)

History

2022:

This service is mostly on life-support, most of its code and dependencies can be considered deprecated. The current docker image wrapping node@v0.10.44 runs rootless and is hopefully enough to keep the bandits out. API attack surface should be minimal anyways.

2014:

This service was originally a prototype I've created to get familiar with Angular and Express. All magic by generator-angular-fullstack. See my note here.

Idea originally by Clemens Lang who created an awesome bash script to download Google fonts in all formats.

License

(c) Mario Ranftl MIT License

Google Fonts Open Source Font Attribution