Using fonts with Rails asset pipeline

  1. If your Rails version is between > 3.1.0 and < 4, place your fonts in any of the these folders:

    • app/assets/fonts
    • lib/assets/fonts
    • vendor/assets/fonts

    For Rails versions > 4, you must place your fonts in the app/assets/fonts folder.

    Note: To place fonts outside of these designated folders, use the following configuration:

    config.assets.precompile << /\.(?:svg|eot|woff|ttf)\z/

    For Rails versions > 4.2, it is recommended to add this configuration to config/initializers/assets.rb.

    However, you can also add it to either config/application.rb , or to config/production.rb

  2. Declare your font in your CSS file:

    @font-face {
      font-family: 'Icomoon';
      src:url('icomoon.eot');
      src:url('icomoon.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
        url('icomoon.svg#icomoon') format('svg'),
        url('icomoon.woff') format('woff'),
        url('icomoon.ttf') format('truetype');
      font-weight: normal;
      font-style: normal;
    }
    

    Make sure your font is named exactly the same as in the URL portion of the declaration. Capital letters and punctuation marks matter. In this case, the font should have the name icomoon.

  3. If you are using Sass or Less with Rails > 3.1.0 (your CSS file has .scss or .less extension), then change the url(...) in the font declaration to font-url(...).

    Otherwise, your CSS file should have the extension .css.erb, and the font declaration should be url('<%= asset_path(...) %>').

    If you are using Rails > 3.2.1, you can use font_path(...) instead of asset_path(...). This helper does exactly the same thing but it’s more clear.

  4. Finally, use your font in your CSS like you declared it in the font-family part. If it was declared capitalized, you can use it like this:

    font-family: 'Icomoon';
    

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