PRC Icon Library (Font Awesome)

Canonical docs: docs/plugins/prc-icon-library/

Open-source reference plugin that wires Font Awesome sprite-based icons into the PRC Platform. It defines PRC_PLATFORM_ICONS_URL / PRC_PLATFORM_ICONS_PATH and ships a build script to populate build/icons/sprites/.

Public repo note: The sibling repository at pewresearch/prc-icon-library includes only brands.svg (Font Awesome Free Brands). All other sprite files are stripped at release time because they require a Font Awesome Pro license. Clone this monorepo plugin or run bash bin/build.sh locally with your own FA Pro kit to obtain the full sprite set.

Status / future direction

PRC intends to transition away from vendored SVG sprites toward WordPress core's SVG Icon API as it stabilizes:

• WP_Icons_Registry — core icon registry (shipped in WP 7.0)
• register_icon_collection() / register_icon() — custom icon registration (gutenberg#77260)
• Reusable IconPickerModal in the block editor (gutenberg#76787)

Track overall progress on WordPress/gutenberg#75715 (SVG Icon API: Iteration for WordPress 7.1). Once collection registration and inline RichText icon insertion land in core, this plugin will register PRC glyphs as a core icon collection instead of maintaining a parallel sprite loader in prc-scripts.

Until that migration, the sprite-reference pattern documented here remains the supported approach for prc-block-bits/icon-span, shareable-text brand icons, and \PRC\Platform\Icons\render().

What it does

• Defines PRC_PLATFORM_ICONS_URL and PRC_PLATFORM_ICONS_PATH at plugin load time so prc-scripts icon helpers can resolve sprite URLs
• Provides bin/build.sh to copy sprites from a licensed @awesome.me kit into build/icons/sprites/ (not run in CI for the public repo)
• On the PRC Platform (private monorepo), all Font Awesome Pro style sprites are vendored under build/icons/sprites/ for build-time efficiency

Key files

Constants defined

Both constants are consumed by \PRC\Platform\Icons\get_icon_as_url() and related helpers in prc-scripts. If the plugin is inactive or sprites are missing, those functions return HTML comments rather than throwing.

Sprite libraries

Filters / hooks

This plugin registers no hooks or filters beyond a robots_txt disallow for /wp-content/plugins/prc-icon-library/ on public sites (both the catch-all User-agent: * group and the dedicated User-agent: Googlebot group, since Googlebot does not inherit rules from *). All rendering logic lives in prc-scripts.

Usage

Icon rendering is handled by functions in the PRC\Platform\Icons namespace (defined in prc-scripts/includes/utils.php).

Render an icon as inline HTML (cached, <i> wrapper):

echo \PRC\Platform\Icons\render( 'solid', 'arrow-right', 1.25 );

Get an icon as an SVG fragment (cached, useful for server-side templating):

$svg = \PRC\Platform\Icons\get_icon_as_svg( 'regular', 'magnifying-glass', '#333' );

Get an icon as a data URI (useful for CSS background-image):

$uri = \PRC\Platform\Icons\get_icon_as_data_uri( 'light', 'circle-check' );

Get a raw sprite fragment URL (used by prc-block-bits/icon-span):

$url = \PRC\Platform\Icons\get_icon_as_url( 'solid', 'arrow-right' );
// https://.../build/icons/sprites/solid.svg#arrow-right

Icons are object-cached for 7 days (prc_icons__rendered / prc_icons__svg groups). Cache keys include PRC_PLATFORM_VERSION, so a version bump invalidates cached markup automatically.

Build

Sprite files are not produced by npm run build in CI for the public repository. Populate them locally:

# From monorepo root (requires PRC_PLATFORM_FONTAWESOME_TOKEN)
npm install
bash plugins/prc-icon-library/bin/build.sh

# Or from the plugin directory
cd plugins/prc-icon-library && bash ./bin/build.sh

The script expects node_modules/@awesome.me/kit-329ff3ff3e (or another kit-* folder) after npm install. If install fails with 404 errors for @fortawesome/* packages, set PRC_PLATFORM_FONTAWESOME_TOKEN and regenerate .npmrc via bash bin/setup/generate-npmrc.sh from the repo root.

After building, regenerate the editor icon index used by @prc/icons / IconPicker:

node plugins/prc-scripts/includes/scripts/src/@prc/icons/bin/build-index.js
npx turbo build --filter=@prc/icons

Dependencies

Licensing

Font Awesome is a trademark of Fonticons, Inc.

Notes

• Sprite-based icons use <use href="…"> references. Sprites must be served from the same origin as the page or browsers silently fail to render.
• The @awesome.me kit used internally includes PRC custom glyphs in custom-icons.svg. Add icons through the Font Awesome kit dashboard, then rebuild.
• The plugin defines constants unconditionally at load time; loading it twice will trigger a PHP notice. Keep it in the standard plugins directory only.