How to Use Gravatars ( Avatars)

Creating The Email Hash

1. Trim leading and trailing whitespace from an email address
2. Force all characters to lower-case
3. md5 hash the final string

As an example, let’s say we start with “MyEmailAddress@example.com ” (note the trailing space which our hypothetical user entered by mistake). If we md5 encode that string directly, we get the following (in PHP):

echo md5( "MyEmailAddress@example.com " );
// "f9879d71855b5ff21e4963273a886bfc"

$email = trim( "MyEmailAddress@example.com " ); // "MyEmailAddress@example.com"
 
$email = strtolower( $email ); // "myemailaddress@example.com"
echo md5( $email );
// "0bc83cb571cd1c50ba6f3e8a78ef1346"

This can easily be combined into a single line:

 
echo md5( strtolower( trim( "MyEmailAddress@example.com " ) ) ); 
You can even write a trusty function and call it: get_gravatar();

it all starts by using the principles above in PHP and do the following: 

function get_gravatar($email, $default, $size="80")
{
   return '<img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id='.md5(strtolower(trim($email))).'

            &default='.$default.'&size='.$size.'&rating=PG" width="'.$size.'px" height="'.$size.'px" />'; 
}

Next request a Gravatar Profile Using PHP

I am going to show you how to get Gravatar profile data as a serialized PHP string.

Using the steps above, I am going to create the Base Request:

1. Create a valid email hash :

   echo md5( strtolower( trim( "MyEmailAddress@example.com " ) ) ); 

2. BUild the URL to request the Profile Page
3. Append .PHP to that URL to indicate that the results should be serialized in PHP format.

The result should be http://www.gravatar.com/205e460b479e2e5b48aec07710c08d50.php

So, requesting this profile in the document should look like:

In The Browser

The result is a serialized string that must be formated. I use PortableContact.net . Feel free to check it out.

An Example of the Gravatar Profile Request

This example (written in PHP, and assuming you can file_get_contents()) just loads up my profile in serialized PHP, then unserializes it and outputs my name:

 

	<?php
 
	$str = file_get_contents( 'http://www.gravatar.com/205e460b479e2e5b48aec07710c08d50.php' );
	$profile = unserialize( $str );
	if ( is_array( $profile ) && isset( $profile['entry'] ) )
		echo $profile['entry'][0]['displayName'];
 
	?>