Unable to Change Favicon with Express.js

This is a really basic question, but I'm trying to change the favicon of my node.js/Express app with

app.use(express.favicon(__dirname + '/public/images/favicon.ico'));

and I'm still getting the default favicon. This is in my app.configure function, and yes, I've verified that there is a favicon.ico in the /public/images/favicon.ico.There's nothing about a favicon.ico in the console, either, which leads me to believe that this line of code is being ignored. Everything else in the function (setting port, setting views directory, setting template engine. etc.) seems to be working fine, so why would this line of code not be executing?

What I tried

  • Emptying browser cache
  • Restarting Terminal and running node app.js again
  • Adding { maxAge: 2592000000 }, as described here

Thanks in advance.

Update: I got it to work. See my answer below for more information.

I tried visiting the site in Safari for the first time (I normally use Chrome) and noticed that it was showing the correct favicon. I tried clearing my cache in Chrome again (twice) to no avail, but after more searching, I found that apparently favicons aren't stored in the cache. I "refreshed my favicon" using the method described here and it worked!

What worked for me finally:

Look that the 

app.use(express.favicon(__dirname + '/public/images/favicon.ico'));

is at the beginning of the app configuration function. I had it before at the end. As the Express doc says: 'The order of which middleware are "defined" using app.use() is very important, they are invoked sequentially, thus this defines middleware precedence.'

I didn't need to set any maxAge.

To test it:

  • Restart the server with node app.js
  • Clear the browser cache
  • Refresh the Favicon with directly accessing it by using "localhost:3000/your_path_to_the favicon/favicon.ico" and reloading

The above answer is no longer valid.

If you use

app.use(express.favicon(__dirname + '/public/images/favicon.ico'));

You'll get this error:

Error: Most middleware (like favicon) is no longer bundled with Express and must be installed separately

What you're going to need to do is get serve-favicon.

run

npm install serve-favicon --save

then add this to your app

var express = require('express');
var favicon = require('serve-favicon');
var app = express();

app.use(favicon(__dirname + '/public/images/favicon.ico'));

Have you tried clearing your browser's cache? Maybe the old favicon is still in the cache.

how to do this without express:

    if(req.method == "GET"){
         if(/favicon\.ico/.test(req.url)){
            fs.readFile("home/usr/path/favicon.ico",function(err,data){
                if(err){
                    console.log(err);
                }else{
                    res.setHeader("Content-Type","image/x-icon");
                    res.end(data);
                }
     });
 }