Use Font Awesome icon as CSS content - html

Question

I want to use a Font Awesome icon as CSS content, i.e.,
a:before {
content: "<i class='fa...'>...</i>";
}
I know I cannot use HTML code in content, so is it only images left?

Answer 1

Update for FontAwesome 5
Thanks to Aurelien
You need to change the font-family to Font Awesome 5 Brands OR Font Awesome 5 Free, based on the type of icon you are trying to render. Also, do not forget to declare font-weight: 900;
a:before {
font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free";
content: "\f095";
display: inline-block;
padding-right: 3px;
vertical-align: middle;
font-weight: 900;
}
Demo
You can read the rest of the answer below to understand how it works and to know some workarounds for spacing between icon and the text.
FontAwesome 4 and below
That's the wrong way to use it. Open the font awesome style sheet, go to the class of the font you want to use say fa-phone, copy the content property under that class with the entity, and use it like:
a:before {
font-family: FontAwesome;
content: "\f095";
}
Demo
Just make sure that if you are looking to target a specific a tag, then consider using a class instead to make it more specific like:
a.class_name:before {
font-family: FontAwesome;
content: "\f095";
}
Using the way above will stick the icon with the remaining text of yours, so if you want to have a bit of space between the two of them, make it display: inline-block; and use some padding-right:
a:before {
font-family: FontAwesome;
content: "\f095";
display: inline-block;
padding-right: 3px;
vertical-align: middle;
}
Extending this answer further, since many might be having a requirement to change an icon on hover, so for that, we can write a separate selector and rules for :hover action:
a:hover:before {
content: "\f099"; /* Code of the icon you want to change on hover */
}
Demo
Now in the above example, icon nudges because of the different size and you surely don't want that, so you can set a fixed width on the base declaration like
a:before {
/* Other properties here, look in the above code snippets */
width: 12px; /* add some desired width here to prevent nudge */
}
Demo

Answer 2

Another solution without you having to manually mess around with the Unicode characters can be found in Making Font Awesome awesome - Using icons without i-tags (disclaimer: I wrote this article).
In a nutshell, you can create a new class like this:
.icon::before {
display: inline-block;
margin-right: .5em;
font: normal normal normal 14px/1 FontAwesome;
font-size: inherit;
text-rendering: auto;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
transform: translate(0, 0);
}
And then use it with any icon, for example:
<a class="icon fa-car" href="#">This is a link</a>

Answer 3

If you have access to SCSS files from font-awesome, you can use this simple solution:
.a:after {
// Import mixin from font-awesome/scss/mixins.scss
#include fa-icon();
// Use icon variable from font-awesome/scss/variables.scss
content: $fa-var-exclamation-triangle;
}

Answer 4

You should have font-weight set to 900 for Font Awesome 5 Free font-family to work.
This is the working one:
.css-selector::before {
font-family: 'Font Awesome 5 Free';
content: "\f101";
font-weight: 900;
}

Answer 5

a:before {
content: "\f055";
font-family: FontAwesome;
left:0;
position:absolute;
top:0;
}
Example Link:
https://codepen.io/bungeedesign/pen/XqeLQg
Get Icon code from:
https://fontawesome.com/cheatsheet?from=io

Answer 6

You can use unicode for this in CSS. If you are using font awesome 5, this is the syntax;
.login::before {
font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free";
font-weight: 900;
content: "\f007";
}
You can see their documentation here.

Answer 7

As it says at FontAwesome website FontAwesome =>
HTML:
<span class="icon login"></span> Login</li>
CSS:
.icon::before {
display: inline-block;
font-style: normal;
font-variant: normal;
text-rendering: auto;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}
.login::before {
font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free";
font-weight: 900;
content: "\f007";
}
In .login::before -> edit content:''; to suit your unicode.

Answer 8

Update for Font Awesome 5 using SCSS
.icon {
#extend %fa-icon;
#extend .fas;
&:before {
content: fa-content($fa-var-user);
}
}

Answer 9

Here's my webpack 4 + font awesome 5 solution:
webpack plugin:
new CopyWebpackPlugin([
{ from: 'node_modules/font-awesome/fonts', to: 'font-awesome' }
]),
global css style:
#font-face {
font-family: 'FontAwesome';
src: url('/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.eot');
src: url('/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
url('/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.woff2') format('woff2'),
url('/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
url('/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
url('/font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.svgfontawesomeregular') format('svg');
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
}
i {
font-family: "FontAwesome";
}