Font Picker

A simple, customizable font picker allowing users to preview, select and use Google Fonts on your website.

Simple setup
No dependencies
Automatic font download and generation of the required CSS selectors
Efficient font previews (full fonts are only downloaded on selection)

→ Demo

If you use React, see Font Picker for React.

Font picker demo

Getting started

To be able to access the API, you'll need to generate a Google Fonts API key.

1. Setup

You have the following options for installing/using the package:

Using script tags: Download the FontPicker.js file from the releases page and save it in your project. Include the script in your HTML at the end of the document <body>:

<script src="https://github.com/samuelmeuli/font-picker/raw/master/path/to/FontPicker.js"></script>
<script>
    const fontPicker = new FontPicker(
        YOUR_API_KEY, // Google API key
        "Open Sans", // Default font
        { limit: 30 }, // Additional options
    );
</script>

Using NPM: If you're using a module bundler like Webpack, you can install the font-picker package using NPM and import it in your code:

npm install font-picker

import FontPicker from "font-picker";

const fontPicker = new FontPicker(
    YOUR_API_KEY, // Google API key
    "Open Sans", // Default font
    { limit: 30 }, // Additional options
);

2. Displaying the font picker

Create an empty <div> with id="font-picker" in your HTML file. This is where the font picker will be generated.

<div id="font-picker"></div>

3. Applying the selected font

Add the class "apply-font" to all HTML elements you want to apply the selected font to.

When the user selects a font, it will automatically be downloaded and applied to all HTML elements with the "apply-font" class.

Class names

Customization

Parameters

The following parameters can be passed to the constructor of the FontPicker class:

const fontPicker = new FontPicker(apiKey, defaultFamily, options, onChange);

apiKey (required): Google API key
defaultFamily: Font that is selected on initialization. Default: "Open Sans"
options: Object with additional optional parameters:
- pickerId: If you have multiple font pickers on your site, you need to give them unique IDs which must be appended to the pickers' id attributes and the .apply-font class names. Example: If the options object is { pickerId: "main" }, use #font-picker-main and .apply-font-main
- families: If only specific fonts shall appear in the list, specify their names in an array. Default: All font families
- categories: Array of font categories to include in the list. Possible values: "sans-serif", "serif", "display", "handwriting", "monospace". Default: All categories
- scripts: Array of scripts which the fonts must include and which will be downloaded on font selection. Default: ["latin"]. Example: ["latin", "greek", "hebrew"] (see all possible values)
- variants: Array of variants which the fonts must include and which will be downloaded on font selection. Default: ["regular"]. Example: ["regular", "italic", "700", "700italic"] (see all possible values)
- filter: Function which must evaluate to true for a font to be included in the list. Default: font => true. Example: If font => font.family.toLowerCase().startsWith("m"), only fonts whose names begin with "M" will be in the list
- limit: Maximum number of fonts to display in the list (the least popular fonts will be omitted). Default: 50
- sort: Sorting attribute for the font list. Possible values: "alphabet", "popularity". Default: "alphabet"
onChange: Function to execute whenever the active font is changed

Functions

The FontPicker class exposes the following functions:

getFonts(): Returns a map of all font names/objects
addFont(fontFamily: string, index?: number): Adds the specified font to the font list (at the given index)
removeFont(fontFamily: string): Removes the specified font from the font list
getActiveFont(): Returns the font object of the currently active font
setActiveFont(fontFamily: string): Sets the provided font as the active font
setOnChange(onChange: (font: Font) => void): Update the onChange function after the font picker has been initialized

Development

Requirements: Node.js, Yarn

Clone this repository: git clone REPO_URL
Install all dependencies: yarn
Generate the library bundle: yarn start
View the rendered component on localhost:3000

Suggestions and contributions are always welcome! Please discuss larger changes via issue before submitting a pull request.

samuelmeuli / font-picker

readme