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How to Integrate RadDrawer with FontAwesome icons

Updated on Aug 24, 2026

This article explains how to create the items of the Drawer and use the FontAwesome icons

RadDrawer control receives a hierarchical structure of elements as explained in Getting Started article. For example, an unordered list where each <li> element is a separate item when the data-role attribute has value drawer-item. The element inside that contains text of the item should have the k-item-text class as demonstrated below:

ASP.NET
<Template>
	<ul> 
		<li data-role='drawer-item' class='k-state-selected'>
			<span class='k-item-text'>Camera</span>
		</li> 
	</ul>
</Template>

In order to add some icons before the text, we can add an additional <span> element with class k-icon that would serve as a font-icon placeholder:

ASP.NET
<Template>
	<ul> 
		<li data-role='drawer-item' class='k-state-selected'>
			<span class='k-icon'></span>
			<span class='k-item-text'>Camera</span>
		</li> 
	</ul>
</Template>

As the FontAwesome 5.* toolkit has some breaking changes compared to the previous FontAwesome 4 toolkit, there is a slight difference on the additional classes that should be added to the k-icon element.

Following are some examples for both the 4 and 5 versions of the FontAwesome toolkit.

FontAwesome 5

The default class for the 5.* version is fas and to add a specific icon, the fa-iconname class should be added also.

ASP.NET
<script src="yourscriptslocation/fontawesome.js"></script>

<script>
	function OnItemClick(sender, args) {
		var itemtext = args.get_item().text();

		alert("You have clicked:" + itemtext);
	}
</script>

<telerik:RadDrawer runat="server" ID="RadDrawer1" Mode="push" Position="left" MinHeight="330" DrawerWidth="200" Mini="true" SwipeToOpen="true">
	<ClientEvents OnItemClick="OnItemClick" />
	<MiniSettings Width="48" />
	<ContentTemplate>
		<p>
			This is the content element containg the text
		</p>
	</ContentTemplate>
	<Template>
		<ul> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item' class='k-state-selected'>
				<span class='k-icon fas fa-camera'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Camera</span>
			</li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-separator'></li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item'>
				<span class='k-icon fas fa-address-book'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Address Book</span>
			</li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item'>
				<span class='k-icon fas fa-address-card'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Address Card</span>
			</li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-separator'></li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item'>
				<span class='k-icon fas fa-calendar-alt'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Calendar</span>
			</li> 
		</ul>
	</Template>
</telerik:RadDrawer>

FontAwesome 4

The default class for the 4.* version is fa and to add a specific icon, the fa-iconname class should be added also.

ASP.NET

<link href="yourstyleslocation/fontawesome.css">

<script>
	function OnItemClick(sender, args) {
		var itemtext = args.get_item().text();

		alert("You have clicked:" + itemtext);
	}
</script>

<telerik:RadDrawer runat="server" ID="RadDrawer1" Mode="push" Position="left" MinHeight="330" DrawerWidth="200" Mini="true" SwipeToOpen="true">
	<ClientEvents OnItemClick="OnItemClick" />
	<MiniSettings Width="48" />
	<ContentTemplate>
		<p>This is the content element containg the text</p>
	</ContentTemplate>
	<Template>
		<ul> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item' class='k-state-selected'>
				<span class='k-icon fa fa-camera'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Camera</span>
			</li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-separator'></li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item'>
				<span class='k-icon fa fa-address-book'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Address Book</span>
			</li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item'>
				<span class='k-icon fa fa-address-card'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Address Card</span>
			</li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-separator'></li> 
			<li data-role='drawer-item'>
				<span class='k-icon fa fa-calendar'></span>
				<span class='k-item-text'>Calendar</span>
			</li> 
		</ul>
	</Template>
</telerik:RadDrawer>

See Also