Angular Material 8/9 Icons Tutorial with Real-world Examples

#2 – Install and setup Angular Material 8 ui library

To set up angular material 8 ui library, enter the following command.

ng add @angular/material

Select the Angular material theme from the given options:

? Choose a prebuilt theme name, or "custom" for a custom theme: Indigo/Pink

❯ Indigo/Pink        [ Preview: https://material.angular.io?theme=indigo-pink ] 
  Deep Purple/Amber  [ Preview: https://material.angular.io?theme=deeppurple-amber ] 
  Pink/Blue Grey     [ Preview: https://material.angular.io?theme=pink-bluegrey ] 
  Purple/Green       [ Preview: https://material.angular.io?theme=purple-green ]

It will ask for Hammer.js (Gesture recognition support) and Angular browser animation support.

Set up HammerJS for gesture recognition? (Y/n) = Y

? Set up browser animations for Angular Material? (Y/n) = Y

Importing MatIconModule in Separate Angular Material Module

We’ve installed the Angular material UI library in Angular project. I would suggest to create a specific angular-material.module.ts file to manage angular material components.

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { MatIconModule } from '@angular/material';

@NgModule({
   imports: [
      MatIconModule
   ],
   exports: [
      MatIconModule
   ]
})

export class AngularMaterialModule { }

Now we can can use angular material icons in our angular app. We just have to declare the <mat-icon> directive in our app to create the vector based material design icons.

Go to app.component.html file and include the code like given below.

<div style="text-align:center">
  <h1>
    <mat-icon>favorite_border</mat-icon> 
      Hello World 
    <mat-icon>favorite_border</mat-icon>
  </h1>
</div>

Visit app.module.ts file and import the AngularMaterialModule.

/* Angular material */
import { BrowserAnimationsModule } from '@angular/platform-browser/animations';
import { AngularMaterialModule } from './material.module';
import { NgModule, CUSTOM_ELEMENTS_SCHEMA } from '@angular/core';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [...],
  imports: [
    BrowserAnimationsModule,
    AngularMaterialModule,
  ],
  providers: [...],
  bootstrap: [...],
  schemas: [CUSTOM_ELEMENTS_SCHEMA]
})

export class AppModule { }

To import the angular material theme, include the given below code to your src > index.html file.

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:300,400,500" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons" rel="stylesheet">

Go to src > styles.css file and add the following code.

@import "~@angular/material/prebuilt-themes/indigo-pink.css";

Now we are done with installing and setting up angular and angular material library. You can type the below command in terminal to run the angular project.

ng serve --open

Angular material 8 offers plenty of icons, to check out the full list of Angular material icons here.

#3 – Create Custom SVG Icons with Angular Material 8 MatIconRegistry Service

Suppose if you require to use custom svg icon in your angular 8/9 project. Keep your custom svg icon headphone.svg in your assets folder.

In order to work with custom icons with angular material <mat-icon> directive, we must import HttpClientModule in app.module.ts file.

import { HttpClientModule } from "@angular/common/http";

@NgModule({
  imports: [
    HttpClientModule
  ]
})

export class AppModule {}

After that we are ready to register custom SVG icons with MatIconRegistry angular material service.

Go to app.component.html file and import the MatIconRegistry and place the icon registration service within your angular 8/9 component’s constructor method.

It takes 2 parameters, the 1st parameter is the icon’s label, and it should be a string type. Our 2nd parameter is the icons location path pointing towards the icon and its a SafeResourceUrl type. We need to import the DomSanitizer service to parse the url string path into SafeResourceUrl.

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { MatIconRegistry } from "@angular/material/icon";
import { DomSanitizer } from "@angular/platform-browser";

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: './app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})

export class AppComponent {
  
  constructor(
    private matIconRegistry: MatIconRegistry,
    private domSanitizer: DomSanitizer
  ) {
    this.matIconRegistry.addSvgIcon(
      "musicon",
      this.domSanitizer.bypassSecurityTrustResourceUrl("../assets/headphone.svg")
    );
  }

}

Finally, we’ve setup the required services to create custom SVG icons within our Angular 8/9 app using Angular material 8 ui library.

The final step is to use the `headphone.svg` icon in app.component.html file.

<mat-icon svgIcon="musicon"></mat-icon>

Now you can display custom svg icon in your app using MatIconRegistry service.

ng serve --open

Angular Material 8/9 icons tutoriall is completed now, i hope you must have loved it. Thanks for reading, have a good day!

Digamber

Digamber Rawat is From Uttarakhand, land of Gods located in northwestern part of India. He is a Data Scientist by profession and a primary author of this blog.