Gravatarify

Hassle-free construction of those pesky gravatar.com urls, with out-of-the-box support for Rails 3, Haml and your favorite framework. It's not that there aren't any alternatives out, there, but none seem to support stuff like Procs for the default picture url, or the multiple host names supported by gravatar.com (great when displaying lots of avatars).

• Source: http://github.com/lwe/gravatarify
• Docs: http://rdoc.info/projects/lwe/gravatarify
• Gem: http://rubygems.org/gems/gravatarify

UPGRADE NOTES: Version 3.x is out of box only compatible with Rails 3, yet the helpers should still work in Rails 2.x, so try to add include Gravatarify::Helper to your ApplicationHelper in Rails 2.x

Ready, Set, Go!

READY Add gravatarify to your Gemfile

gem 'gravatarify', '~> 3.0.0'

SET Guess, you are all set :) when using HAML or Sinatra you might to add:

# e.g. for Sinatra
helpers Gravatarify::Helper

# or include for Haml
Haml::Helpers.send(:include, Gravatarify::Helper)

# NOTE: basically just include the Gravatarify::Helper module

GO Use it! When using Rails then just give it an email and it will return the gravatar url:

# creates an 20x20 pixel <img/> tag in your Rails ERB views:
<%= gravatar_tag @user.email, :size => 20 %>

# or in HAML views
# (Note: how it's possible to skip the email attribute, btw - that's a feature)
%img{ gravatar_attrs(@user, :size => 20) }/

More!? Allright, that was just the quickstart, to get up and running with ease. However, this library provides quite a bit more, like:

• View helpers, namely gravatar_url and gravatar_tag, see "Using the view helpers".
• Styles are like reusable definitions of options, nice to DRY-up your code, see "Using styles".
• A base module which provides the gravatar url generation, ready to be integrated into custom helpers, plain ruby code or whatever, see "Back to the roots".

Using the view helpers

Probably one of the easiest ways to add support for gravatar images is with the included view helpers. When using Rails these should be automatically available, if not do something like:

# e.g. for Sinatra
helpers Gravatarify::Helper

# or include for Haml
Haml::Helpers.send(:include, Gravatarify::Helper)

# NOTE: basically just include the Gravatarify::Helper module

This then provides three helper methods: gravatar_url, gravatar_attrs and gravatar_tag. To just build a simple <img/> tag, pass in an object (if it responds to email or mail) or a string containing the e-mail address:

<%= gravatar_tag @user %> # => assumes @user.respond_to?(:email) or @user.respond_to?(:mail)

This builds a neat <img/>-tag. To display an "X" rated avatar which is 25x25 pixel in size and the <img/> tag should have a class attribute, do:

<%= gravatar_tag @user, :size => 25, :rating => :x, :html => { :class => "gravatar" } %>

If any additional HTML attributes are needed on the tag, or in the gravatar_attrs, just pass them in the :html option as hash. If more control is needed, or just the plain URL is required, resort to gravatar_url, which returns a string with the (unescaped) url:

<img src="<%= h(gravatar_url(@user.author_email, :size => 16)) %>" alt="Gravatar"/>

Using styles

With styles it's possible to easily change e.g. the size of all gravatars based on a name, these are reusable presets of options:

# in config/initializers/gravatarify.rb or similar:
Gravatarify.styles[:mini] = { :size => 16, :html => { :class => 'gravatar gravatar-mini' } }
Gravatarify.styles[:default] = { :size => 45, :html => { :class => 'gravatar' } }

# then in/some/view.html.erb:
<%= gravatar_tag @user, :mini %> # => <img alt="" class="gravatar gravatar-mini" height="16" src.... />

# or in/another/view.html.haml:
%img{ gravatar_attrs(@user, :default) }/ # => <img alt="" class="gravatar" height="45" ... />

Need to change to size of all :mini gravatars? Easy, just change the definition in Gravatarify.styles. Of course settings via Gravatarify.options are "mixed-in" as well, so:

Gravatarify.options[:default] = Proc.new { |*params| "http://example.com/avatar-#{params.first[:size] || 80}.jpg" }
Gravatarify.styles[:mini] => { :size => 16 }

<%= gravatar_tag @user, :mini %> # => <img alt="" height="16" src=".....?d=http://example.com/avatar-16.jpg" width="16" />

All methods accept a style, i.e. a style parameter can be passed in to gravatar_attrs, gravatar_tag and of course to gravatar_url. Any option can be passed in after a style, to customize the gravatar if the styles needs slight alteration:

gravatar_url(@user, :mini, :filetype => false, :rating => :x) # => "http://........123ab12?s=16&r=x"

Back to the roots?

No need for sophisticated stuff like view helpers, want to go back to the roots? Then feel free to use Gravatarify::Base#gravatar_url directly.

When the ability to display image tags is required in different view frameworks (like liquid!?), then just ensure that Gravatarify::Helper is included in the framework in question. See {Gravatarify::Base#gravatar_url} and of course {Gravatarify::Helper} for more informations and usage examples.

Need more control?

Option	Type	Description	Default
:default	String, Proc	Fully qualified URL to an image, which is used if gravatar.com has no image for the supplied email. Procs can be used to return e.g. an image based on the request size (see Advanced stuff). Furthermore gravatar.com provides several "special values" which generate icons, these are "wavatar", "monsterid" and "identicon", finally if set to 404 gravatar.com returns the HTTP 404 Not Found error. If nothing is specified gravatar.com returns it's gravatar icon.	-
:rating	String, Symbol	Each avatar at gravatar.com has a rating associated (which is based on MPAAs rating system), valid values are: g - general audiences, pg - parental guidance suggested, r - restricted and x - x-rated :). Gravatar.com returns g-rated avatars, unless anything else is specified.	-
:size	Integer	Avatars are square, so :size defines the length of the sides in pixel, if nothing is specified gravatar.com returns 80x80px images.	-
:secure	Boolean, Proc	If set to true gravatars secure host (https://secure.gravatar.com/) is used to serve the avatars from. Can be a Proc to inflect wheter or not to use the secure host based on request parameters.	false
:filetype	String, Symbol	Change image type, gravatar.com supports :gif, :png and :jpg. If set to false then a URL without an extension will be built (and gravatar.com then returns a JPG image).	:jpg
:html	Hash	Ignored in URL generation, only used in gravatar_attrs and gravatar_tag to pass in additional HTML attributes (like class, id etc.).	-

To set the options globally, access the Gravatarify.options hash and set any options which should apply to all gravatar urls there. Of course all settings can be overridden locally:

# disable suffix and set default size to 16x16px
Gravatarify.options[:filetype] = false
Gravatarify.options[:size] = 16

gravatar_url(@user.email) # => http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/..f93ff1e?s=16
gravatar_url(@user.email, :filetype => :png) # => http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/..f93ff1e.png?s=16

To define global HTML attributes go ahead and do something like:

# add title attribute
Gravatarify.options[:html] = { :title => "Gravatar" }

Not yet enough?

The :default option can be passed in a Proc, so this is certainly useful to for example to generate an image url, based on the request size:

# in an initializer
Gravatarify.options[:default] = Proc.new do |options, object|
  "http://example.com/avatar-#{options[:size] || 80}.jpg"
end

# now each time a gravatar url is generated, the Proc is evaluated:
gravatar_url(@user)
# => "http://0.gravatar.com/...jpg?d=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fgravatar-80.jpg"
gravatar_url(@user, :size => 16)
# => "http://0.gravatar.com/...jpg?d=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fgravatar-16.jpg&s=16"

Into the block is passed the options hash and as second parameter the object itself, so it's possible to do stuff like

# doing stuff like showing default avatar based on gender...
@user = User.new(:gender => :female, :email => 'bella@gmail.com') # => @user.female? = true

gravatar_url @user, :default => Proc.new { |opts, obj| "http://example.com/avatar#{obj.respond_to?(:female) && obj.female? ? '_female' : ''}.jpg" }
# => http://0.gravatar.com/...jpg?d=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fgravatar_female.jpg

Not only the :default option accepts a Proc, but also :secure, can be useful to handle cases where it should evaluate against request.ssl? for example.

Upgrading from 1.x

All HTML options must be passed in the :html attribute. This allows for predictable results for all methods and no magic involved! So instead of doing:

gravatar_tag(@user, :size => 30, :class => "gravatar", :title => "Gravatar")
# Note: in Version 2.0 this would build an image src like http://..gravatar.com/...../?class=gravatar&s=30&title=Gravatar

do:

gravatar_tag(@user, :size => 30, :html => { :class => "Gravatar", :title => "Gravatar" })

An important thing to know is that the :html is deep merged, with defaults, so stuff like:

Gravatarify.options[:html] = { :title => "Gravatar" }
gravatar_tag(@user, :html => { :class => "gravatar" }) # => <img alt="" class="gravatar" ... title="Gravatar" .../>

Furthermore the option :html is ignored when building the url parameters.

If the gravatarify method was not used, there's no need to change anything at all :) Though if it's used, then...

1. Remove all occurences of gravatarify in the models
2. Change calls from <%= image_tag @user.gravatar_url %> to saner <%= gravatar_tag @user %> calls, or if just the url is required to gravatar_url(@user).

If the model used gravatarify :author_email, then changes in the views must reflect that and use it directly: <%= gravatar_tag @user.author_email %>. If the model defines author_email, but not email (and has no attribute named email), then it could be safely aliased like:

# Fields: (id, name, author_email, ...)
class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
  alias_attribute :email, :author_email
end

# and in the views:
<%= gravatar_tag @author %>

In most cases the migration path should be pretty easy, just always use the helper methods! The gravatarify method was introduced to provide compatibility with gravtastic, yet it's not way to go in my opinion. If for some reason it's required then feel free to fallback and use an older version (i.e. 1.2.1):

[sudo] gem install gravatarify -v 1.2.1

About the code

Eventhough this library has about 100 LOC, it's split into four files, maybe a bit of an overkill, though I like neat and tidy classes :)

lib/gravatarify.rb                      # loads the other files from lib/gravatarify
                                        # and hooks the necessary modules into
                                        # HAML or ActionView.

lib/gravatarify/base.rb                 # Provides all logic required to generate
                                        # gravatar.com urls from an email address.
                                        # Check out Gravatarify::Base.gravatar_url,
                                        # this is the absolute core method.

lib/gravatarify/helper.rb               # Defines the view helpers: gravatar_attrs
                                        # and gravatar_tag

lib/gravatarify/utils.rb                # Provides commonly used methods, like helpers to
                                        # uri and html escape strings or deep mergeing
                                        # hashes. Though these utils are only for internal
                                        # uses :)

Contribute

1. Fork the project and hack away
2. Ensure that the changes are well tested
3. Send me a pull request

Thanks

• gudleik for his work on allowing an empty :filetype
• thegcat travis, jruby and ruby 1.9 support
• technoweenie fix to use consistent hashing: Zlib.crc32

Licence

Copyright (c) 2009 Lukas Westermann

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.