Developer Documentation

HTTP API

Post a piece of text and get back every style the generator knows for it, already rendered as Unicode. There is no key, no sign-up and no SDK – it is one endpoint that takes JSON and returns JSON.

curl -X POST https://www.thefancytext.com/api/font \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Hello", "page": 1, "size": 20}'

There is also GET https://www.thefancytext.com/api, which returns {"status":"ok"} and nothing else. Use it as a health check.

Request parameters

The body is a JSON object. Only text is required.

Response

200 OK with Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8.

{
  "results": [
    { "text": "Truly Elegant Fancy Text", "name": "rup5050rup_2" },
    { "text": "ミ★  𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨  ★彡", "name": "Sant Font Reverse 1" },
    { "text": "𒆜  𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘  𒆜", "name": "Sant Font Reverse 2" }
  ],
  "page": 1,
  "limit": 3,
  "total_pages": 111,
  "total_results": 332
}

Errors

Failures return a JSON body of {"error": "…"} with the status below.

Code examples

JavaScript

const res = await fetch('https://www.thefancytext.com/api/font', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ text: 'Hello', size: 1000 })
});

if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).error);

const data = await res.json();

// Drop the section headings before using the list.
const styles = data.results.filter(r => !r.name.startsWith('rup5050rup_'));

console.log(styles[0].text);

PHP

$ch = curl_init('https://www.thefancytext.com/api/font');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST           => true,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER     => ['Content-Type: application/json'],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS     => json_encode(['text' => 'Hello', 'size' => 50]),
]);

$data = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
curl_close($ch);

foreach ($data['results'] as $style) {
    if (strpos($style['name'], 'rup5050rup_') === 0) {
        continue; // section heading
    }
    echo $style['name'], ': ', $style['text'], PHP_EOL;
}

Python

import requests

r = requests.post(
    'https://www.thefancytext.com/api/font',
    json={'text': 'Hello', 'size': 1000},
    timeout=15,
)
r.raise_for_status()

styles = [s for s in r.json()['results']
          if not s['name'].startswith('rup5050rup_')]

print(len(styles), 'styles')

npm package

fancy-text-generator is a small standalone package that maps text to Unicode look-alikes without a network call. It is not the same engine as the site – it carries 16 styles rather than the full set – so reach for the HTTP API when you want everything.

• 1.2.0 latest version
• ISC licence
• 0 dependencies
• 13 KB unpacked
• 16 styles

Install

npm install fancy-text-generator
# or
yarn add fancy-text-generator

Usage

The package exports one function. There is no named export, no bold() or italic() helper – the style is the second argument.

const transformText = require('fancy-text-generator');

transformText('Hello', 'bold');    // 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼
transformText('Hello', 'fraktur'); // 𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬
transformText('Hello', 'fancy1');  // 🅗🅔🅛🅛🅞

// An unknown style is not an error - the input comes back unchanged.
transformText('Hello', 'nope');    // Hello

• CommonJS only – use require(), not import, unless your bundler interops.
• No TypeScript definitions are shipped.
• Runs anywhere ES6 does, in Node or in the browser through a bundler.

Style reference

Every style the package accepts, with what "Hello" becomes.

View on npm Source on GitHub

Fair use and support

The API is open and unauthenticated because it powers the pages on this site, and opening it up costs nothing extra. There is no published rate limit, but it runs on ordinary shared hosting, so please cache what you can: for a given piece of text the response never changes, and one call with size: 1000 is far cheaper than 300 paged ones.

A link back to thefancytext.com is appreciated but not required. If you are planning something high-volume, get in touch first so it does not look like an attack.

The API returns the same styles the font generator shows on screen, and the png text generator is the hosted version of the rendering it describes.

• Report a bug or request a style on GitHub.
• Contact us about anything else, including high-volume use.