How to use icons and symbols from "Font Awesome" on Native Android Application

Question

Font Awesome seems to be working fine for me in my android app. I did the following:

1. Copied fontawesome-webfont.ttf into my assests folder
2. Found the character entities for icons I wanted, using this page: http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/cheatsheet/

3. Created an entry in strings.xml for each icon. Eg for a heart:

   <string name="icon_heart">&#xf004;</string>
   

4. Referenced said entry in the view of my xml layout:

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/like"
        style="?android:attr/buttonStyleSmall"
        ...
        android:text="@string/icon_heart" />
   

5. Loaded the font in my onCreate method and set it for the appropriate Views:

   Typeface font = Typeface.createFromAsset( getAssets(), "fontawesome-webfont.ttf" );
   ...
   Button button = (Button)findViewById( R.id.like );
   button.setTypeface(font);
   

Try IcoMoon: http://icomoon.io

• Pick the icons you want
• Assign characters to each icon
• Download the font

Say, you picked the play icon, assigned the letter 'P' to it, and downloaded the file icomoon.ttf to your asset folder. This is how you show the icon:

xml:

<TextView
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:textSize="48sp"
  android:text="P" />

java:

Typeface typeface = Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(), "icomoon.ttf");
textView.setTypeface(typeface);

I've given a talk on making beautiful Android apps, which includes explanation on using icon fonts, plus adding gradients to make the icons even prettier: http://www.sqisland.com/talks/beautiful-android

The icon font explanation starts at slide 34: http://www.sqisland.com/talks/beautiful-android/#34

Maybe too late but I had the same need so I've published this https://github.com/liltof/font-awsome-for-android It's an android ready xml version of font awesome usable just like Keith Corwin said

Hope it will help others.

As above is great example and works great:

Typeface font = Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(), "fontawesome-webfont.ttf" );

Button button = (Button)findViewById( R.id.like );
button.setTypeface(font);

BUT! > this will work if string inside button you set from xml:

<string name="icon_heart">&#xf004;</string>
button.setText(getString(R.string.icon_heart));

If you need to add it dynamically can use this:

String iconHeart = "";
String valHexStr = iconHeart.replace("&#x", "").replace(";", "");
long valLong = Long.parseLong(valHexStr,16);
button.setText((char) valLong + "");

If you want programmatic setText without add string to string.xml

see its hexadecimal code here:

http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/cheatsheet/

replace  to 0xf066

 Typeface typeface = Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(), "fontawesome-webfont.ttf");
    textView.setTypeface(typeface);
    textView.setText(new String(new char[]{0xf006 }));

There is small and useful library designed for this purposes:

dependencies {
    compile 'com.shamanland:fonticon:0.1.9'
}

Get demo on Google Play.

You can easily add font-based icon in your layout:

<com.shamanland.fonticon.FontIconView
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="@string/ic_android"
    android:textSize="@dimen/icon_size"
    android:textColor="@color/icon_color"
    />

You can inflate font-icon as Drawable from xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<font-icon
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:text="@string/ic_android"
    android:textSize="@dimen/big_icon_size"
    android:textColor="@color/green_170"
    />

Java code:

Drawable icon = FontIconDrawable.inflate(getResources(), R.xml.ic_android);

Links:

• Project page
• Github repo