How can I add a fontawesome icon to a table in Rmarkdown? - r

Question

I'm looking for tidy way to add a hyperlink incorporating a fontawesome icon to an Rmarkdown table (kable) — for incorporation in an html bookdown page.
In other parts of my document, I've used the icon package, to render a hyperlinked fontawesome icon (outside of a table) using standard markdown syntax, e.g.:
`r icon::fa("file-pdf", size = 5)](https://www.google.com/){target="_blank"}`
But this approach doesn't work when I've attempted to incorporate it as part of a kable.
```{r}
library(icon)
library(knitr)
library(tidyverse)
## note this code throws the following error: Error in
## as.data.frame.default(x[[i]], optional = TRUE, stringsAsFactors =
## stringsAsFactors) : cannot coerce class "c("knit_asis",
## "knit_icon")" to a data.frame
link_location <- "www.google.com"
data_test_1 <- data.frame(
file = c('Version 1', 'Version 2', 'Version 3'),
last_updated = Sys.Date(),
pdf_logo = icon::fa("file-pdf")) %>%
mutate(pdf_logo = cell_spec(pdf_logo,
link = link_location)) %>%
kable("html", escape = F, align = "c")
data_test_1
```
So far I've come up with a workaround that involves downloading the .svg file from the fontawesome website and adding it as an image. It works... sort of, but I would prefer to have the ability to change the size of the icon and make it more easily reproducible.
This is the code for my current workaround.
```{r fontawesome_table ='asis'}
library(tidyverse)
library(kableExtra)
## download svg from location manually
https://fontawesome.com/icons/r-project?style=brands
data_test_2 <- data.frame(
file = c('Version 1', 'Version 2', 'Version 3'),
last_updated = Sys.Date(),
R_logo = "![](r-project-brands.svg)") %>%
mutate(R_logo = cell_spec(R_logo, link = "https://cran.r-
project.org/")) %>%
kable("html", escape = F, align = "c")
data_test_2
```
Which produces this output...
Does anyone have any ideas for how I could either, adjust the size the icon in the table, or call the icon from another package/css to create a more tidy solution?

Answer 1

Here is a way using the fontawesome package instead. I also had to use a custom link building function:
```{r, echo = F, message=F, warning=F}
library(fontawesome)
library(knitr)
library(tidyverse)
library(kableExtra)
## note this code throws the following error: Error in
## as.data.frame.default(x[[i]], optional = TRUE, stringsAsFactors =
## stringsAsFactors) : cannot coerce class "c("knit_asis",
## "knit_icon")" to a data.frame
link_location <- "www.google.com"
addLink <- function() {
paste0("", as.character(fa("file-pdf")), "")
}
data_test_1 <- data.frame(file = c('Version 1', 'Version 2', 'Version 3'),
last_updated = Sys.Date(),
pdf_logo = addLink())
kable(data_test_1, escape = F, align = "c")
```

Answer 2

Another solution is the icons package. With icons you cannot only use fontawesome but several icon packages incl. Material icons, e.g.
Install it with devtools::install_github("mitchelloharawild/icons").
Download the font you want to use, here: download_fontawesome().
Now access the icon with either fontawesome("rocket", style = "solid") or icons::fontawesome$solid$rocket.
In an Rmarkdown document like this:
```{r icon-chunk}
fontawesome("rocket", style = "solid")
```
or inline like this
`r icons::fontawesome("rocket", style = "solid")`
In some cases you may need backticks. E.g. for the R icon
fontawesome$brands$`r-project`