Express js prevent GET /favicon.ico

Question

In every request, my server is receiving GET request to /favicon.ico, even when it's REST api that not include html file. Why is this happening and how can I prevent this request?

Answer 1

Browsers will by default try to request /favicon.ico from the root of a hostname, in order to show an icon in the browser tab.

If you want to avoid this request returning a 404, you can either:

• Supply a favicon.ico file that is available at the root of your site.
• Use a module such as serve-favicon to point requests to a specific file.
• Catch the favicon.ico request and send a 204 No Content status:

app.get('/favicon.ico', (req, res) => res.status(204));

Answer 2

my preferred method is middleware

put this somewhere:

function ignoreFavicon(req, res, next) {
  if (req.originalUrl.includes('favicon.ico')) {
    res.status(204).end()
  }
  next();
}

then:

app.use(ignoreFavicon);

Answer 3

I agree with @Blair Anderson that middleware is the best course of action here but 204 should not return a body. Also, you may want to catch all favicon request e.g.: https://example.com/some/path/favicon.ico. In which case something like this works best:

app.use( function(req, res, next) {

  if (req.originalUrl && req.originalUrl.split("/").pop() === 'favicon.ico') {
    return res.sendStatus(204);
  }

 next();
  
});