Public Domain Flags Archive (in Vector Image Format)

Some time ago, when I was implementing the EMCCountryPickerController component I described in some earlier posts (such as this one), I soon realised I needed high quality images of the flags of all the countries listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard. And since the EMCCountryPickerController library is GPL-licensed, I needed images whose license was compatible with it in order to distribute them together with the component.

I found decent collections of flags in the internet but at the end I decided to build my own, especially in order to overcome problems that arose from the limited resolution of many image collections.

I picked the flags from Wikimedia Commons since they're available in SVG format (a widely used vector image format). This way, if I need to, I can render a flag at any resolution.

I then assembled a GitHub repository where you can find:

• All the flags in SVG format.
• All the flags in PNG format scaled to a width of 256 pixels.
• All the flags in PNG format, scaled to a width of 512 pixels.

The following is a shell script that can be used to render the flags archive at the desired widths.

The script requires librsvg to be installed.