How to host google web fonts on my own server?

Question

I need to use some google fonts on an intranet application. The clients may or may not have internet connection. Reading the license terms, it appears that its legally allo

Answer 1

You can actually download all font format variants directly from Google and include them in your css to serve from your server. That way you don't have to concern about Google tracking your site's users. However, the downside maybe slowing down your own serving speed. Fonts are quite demanding on resources. I have not done any tests in this issue yet, and wonder if anyone has similar thoughts.

Answer 2

Great solution is google-webfonts-helper .

It allows you to select more than one font variant, which saves a lot of time.

Answer 3

It is legally allowed as long as you stick to the terms of the font's license - usually the OFL.

You'll need a set of web font formats, and the Font Squirrel Webfont Generator can produce these.

But the OFL required the fonts be renamed if they are modified, and using the generator means modifying them.

Answer 4

My solution was to download the TTF files from google web fonts and then use onlinefontconverter.com.

Answer 5

You may follow the script which is developed using PHP. Where you can download any google fonts by using the script. It will download the fonts and create a CSS file and archive to zip.
You can download the source code from the GitHub https://github.com/sourav101/google-fonts-downloader

$obj = new GoogleFontsDownloader;

if(isset($_GET['url']) && !empty($_GET['url']))
{
    $obj->generate($_GET['url']);
}

if(isset($_GET['download']) && !empty($_GET['download']) && $_GET['download']=='true')
{
    $obj->download();
}

---

/**
* GoogleFontsDownloader
* Easy way to download any google fonts.
* @author     Shohrab Hossain
* @version    1.0.0 
*/
class GoogleFontsDownloader
{
    private $url      = '';
    private $dir      = 'dist/';
    private $fontsDir = 'fonts/';
    private $cssDir   = 'css/';
    private $fileName = 'fonts.css';
    private $content  = '';
    private $errors   = '';
    private $success  = '';
    public  $is_downloadable  = false;

    public function __construct()
    {
        ini_set('allow_url_fopen', 'on');
        ini_set('allow_url_include', 'on');
    }

    public function generate($url = null)
    {
        if (filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) === FALSE) 
        {
            $this->errors .= "<li><strong>Invalid url!</strong> $url</li>";
        }
        else
        {
            $this->url = $url;
            // delete previous files
            $this->_destroy();
            // write font.css
            $this->_css();
            // write fonts
            $this->_fonts();
            // archive files
            $this->_archive();
        }  
        // show all messages
        $this->_message();
    }

    public function download()
    { 
        // Download the created zip file
        $zipFileName = trim($this->dir, '/').'.zip';
        if (file_exists($zipFileName))
        {
            header("Content-type: application/zip");
            header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename = $zipFileName");
            header("Pragma: no-cache");
            header("Expires: 0");
            readfile("$zipFileName");

            // delete file 
            unlink($zipFileName);
            array_map('unlink', glob("$this->dir/*.*"));
            rmdir($this->dir);

        } 
    }   

    private function _archive()
    {
        if (is_dir($this->dir))
        {
            $zipFileName = trim($this->dir, '/').'.zip';
            $zip = new \ZipArchive(); 
            if ($zip->open($zipFileName, ZipArchive::CREATE) === TRUE) 
            {
                $zip->addGlob($this->dir. "*.*");
                $zip->addGlob($this->dir. "*/*.*");
                if ($zip->status == ZIPARCHIVE::ER_OK)
                {
                    $this->success .= '<li>Zip create successful!</li>';
                    $this->is_downloadable = true;
                }
                else 
                {
                    $this->errors .= '<li>Failed to create to zip</li>';
                } 
            } 
            else 
            {
                $this->errors .= '<li>ZipArchive not found!</li>';
            }  
            $zip->close(); 
        }
        else
        {
            $this->errors .= "<li><strong>File</strong> not exists!</li>";
        } 
    }   

    private function _css()
    {  
        $filePath = $this->dir.$this->cssDir.$this->fileName;
        $content  = $this->_request($this->url);
        if (!empty($content))
        {
            if (file_put_contents($filePath, $content))
            {
                $this->success .= "<li>$this->fileName generated successful!</li>";
                $this->content = $content; 
            }
            else
            {
                $this->errors .= '<li>Permission errro in $this->fileName! Unable to write $filePath.</li>';
            }
        }
        else
        {
            $this->errors .= '<li>Unable to create fonts.css file!</li>';
        }
    }

    private function _fonts()
    {
        if (!empty($this->content))
        {
            preg_match_all('#\bhttps?://[^\s()<>]+(?:\([\w\d]+\)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/))#', $this->content, $match);
            $gFontPaths = $match[0];
            if (!empty($gFontPaths) && is_array($gFontPaths) && sizeof($gFontPaths)>0)
            {
                $count = 0;
                foreach ($gFontPaths as $url) 
                {
                    $name     = basename($url);
                    $filePath = $this->dir.$this->fontsDir.$name;
                    $this->content = str_replace($url, '../'.$this->fontsDir.$name, $this->content);

                    $fontContent  = $this->_request($url);
                    if (!empty($fontContent))
                    {
                        file_put_contents($filePath, $fontContent);
                        $count++;
                        $this->success .= "<li>The font $name downloaded!</li>";
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        $this->errors .= "<li>Unable to download the font $name!</li>";
                    } 
                }

                file_put_contents($this->dir.$this->cssDir.$this->fileName, $this->content);
                $this->success .= "<li>Total $count font(s) downloaded!</li>";
            }
        }
    }

    private function _request($url)
    {
        $ch = curl_init(); 
        curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
            CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => FALSE,
            CURLOPT_HEADER         => FALSE,
            CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => TRUE,
            CURLOPT_URL            => $url,
            CURLOPT_REFERER        => $url,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => TRUE,
        ));
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        if (!empty($result))
        {
            return $result;
        } 
        return false;
    }

    private function _destroy()
    {
        $cssPath = $this->dir.$this->cssDir.$this->fileName;
        if (file_exists($cssPath) && is_file($cssPath))
        {
            unlink($cssPath);
        } 
        else
        {
            mkdir($this->dir.$this->cssDir, 0777, true);
        }

        $fontsPath = $this->dir.$this->fontsDir;
        if (!is_dir($fontsPath))
        {
            mkdir($fontsPath, 0777, true);
        }
        else
        {
            array_map(function($font) use($fontsPath) {
                if (file_exists($fontsPath.$font) && is_file($fontsPath.$font))
                {
                    unlink($fontsPath.$font);
                }
            }, glob($fontsPath.'*.*')); 
        }
    }

    private function _message()
    {
        if (strlen($this->errors)>0)
        {
            echo "<div class='alert alert-danger'><ul>$this->errors</ul></div>";
        }  
        if (strlen($this->success)>0)
        {
            echo "<div class='alert alert-success'><ul>$this->success</ul></div>";
        } 
    } 
}

Answer 6

Please keep in mind that my answer has aged a lot.

There are other more technically sophisticated answers below, e.g.:

• neverpanic/google-font-download
• google-webfont-helper
• localfont

so don't let the fact that this is the currently accepted answer give you the impression that this is still the best one.

---

You can also now also download google's entire font set via on github at their google/font repository. They also provide a ~420MB zip snapshot of their fonts.

---

You first download your font selection as a zipped package, providing you with a bunch of true type fonts. Copy them somewhere public, somewhere you can link to from your css.

On the google webfont download page, you'll find a include link like so:

http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cantarell:400,700,400italic,700italic|Candal

It links to a CSS defining the fonts via a bunch of @font-face defintions.

Open it in a browser to copy and paste them into your own CSS and modify the urls to include the right font file and format types.

So this:

    @font-face {
      font-family: 'Cantarell';
      font-style: normal;
      font-weight: 700;
      src: local('Cantarell Bold'), local('Cantarell-Bold'), url(http://themes.googleusercontent.com/static/fonts/cantarell/v3/Yir4ZDsCn4g1kWopdg-ehHhCUOGz7vYGh680lGh-uXM.woff) format('woff');
    }

becomes this:

    /* Your local CSS File */
    @font-face {
        font-family: 'Cantarell';
        font-style: normal;
        font-weight: 700;
        src: local('Cantarell Bold'), local('Cantarell-Bold'), url(../font/Cantarell-Bold.ttf) format('truetype');
    }

As you can see, a downside of hosting the fonts on your own system this way is, that you restrict yourself to the true type format, whilst the google webfont service determines by the accessing device which formats will be transmitted.

Furthermore, I had to add a .htaccess file to my the directory holding the fonts containing mime types to avoid errors from popping up in Chrome Dev Tools.

For this solution, only true type is needed, but defining more does not hurt when you want to include different fonts as well, like font-awesome.

#.htaccess
AddType application/vnd.ms-fontobject .eot
AddType font/ttf .ttf
AddType font/otf .otf
AddType application/x-font-woff .woff