Exporting Icons

The icon:export command extracts icons from a downloaded JSON collection and writes them as standalone SVG files. This is useful for designers who work in tools like Figma or Illustrator, for projects that need static SVG assets, or for cherry-picking a small subset of icons to commit to your repository.

Quick start

# Export specific icons
php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export tabler home star arrow-left

# Export an entire set
php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export mdi --all

# Export to a custom directory
php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export tabler home user --dest=./assets/icons

Arguments

Argument	Required	Description
`prefix`	Yes	Icon set prefix (e.g., `tabler`, `mdi`)
`icons`	No	One or more icon names to export

You must provide either specific icon names or the --all flag.

Options

Option	Short	Description	Default
`--all`		Export every icon (and alias) in the set	`false`
`--dest`	`-d`	Output directory for SVG files	`./export/{prefix}/`
`--overwrite`		Overwrite existing SVG files	`false`
`--json`		Path to a JSON collection file	auto-detected from `resources/json/`

How it works

The command loads the JSON collection file for the given prefix (auto-detected from resources/json/{prefix}.json or specified with --json).
It resolves each requested icon, including aliases. An alias like house that points to home produces its own house.svg file with the resolved SVG content.
Each icon is rendered as a complete SVG element with xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" so the file works in any context (design tools, image viewers, browsers, etc.).
Files are written to the output directory with a progress bar for large sets.

Examples

Export a handful of icons for a project

php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export heroicons home user cog bell --dest=./resources/icons

This creates four SVG files in ./resources/icons/:

resources/icons/
  home.svg
  user.svg
  cog.svg
  bell.svg

Export an entire set for a design team

php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export tabler --all --dest=./design/tabler-icons

Export from a custom JSON file

If the JSON file is not in the default resources/json/ location:

php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export custom --all --json=/path/to/my-icons.json --dest=./output

Re-export with overwrite

By default, existing files are skipped. Use --overwrite to replace them:

php vendor/bin/swarm-icons icon:export tabler home star --dest=./icons --overwrite

The summary output shows how many icons were exported, skipped, or failed:

 [OK] 2 exported in ./icons

Skipping and overwrite behavior

Without --overwrite, the command skips any icon whose .svg file already exists in the output directory. The summary tells you how many were skipped:

 [OK] 5 exported, 3 skipped (existing) in ./export/tabler

This makes it safe to re-run the command after adding new icon names to your list without losing any manual edits to previously exported files.