Gravatar strips the spaces in the name from default URL

[christos]

It would seem that Gravatar strips any (encoded) spaces from the default URL (?d=DEFAULT_IMAGE_URL) breaking the expected image result.

Using the example from the README:

curl -I "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/EMAIL_MD5?d=https%3A%2F%2Fui-avatars.com%2Fapi%2F/Lasse+Rafn/128"

HTTP/2 302
server: nginx
date: Thu, 04 Mar 2021 14:55:06 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
content-length: 0
location: https://i2.wp.com/ui-avatars.com/api//LasseRafn/128?ssl=1
last-modified: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 08:00:00 GMT
link: <https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/EMAIL_MD5?d=https%3A%2F%2Fui-avatars.com%2Fapi%2F/Lasse+Rafn/128>; rel="canonical"

Is there any way to encode first and last names separately in the URL path components so as not to loose the spaces?

(Awesome service BTW!)

[LasseRafn]

Hi, thanks man!

As far as I remember, it works if you url encode the entire URL (and not use + instead of space) so the ui-avatars url would actually be:

https%3A%2F%2Fui-avatars.com%2Fapi%2FLasse%2BRafn

And full url:

https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/EMAIL_MD5?d=https%3A%2F%2Fui-avatars.com%2Fapi%2FLasse%2BRafn

And the output is:

Let me know if this doesn't work 😄

[christos]

Hey @LasseRafn

That did the trick, thanks!

I needed to first CGI escape the name, then URL encode the resulting URL. Here is the Ruby code for anyone who stumbles upon this issue in the future.

  def gravatar_url(user)
    email_md5 = Digest::MD5.hexdigest(user.email)
    full_name = CGI.escape(user.full_name)
    fallback_url = ERB::Util.url_encode("https://ui-avatars.com/api/#{full_name}")

    "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/#{email_md5}?d=#{fallback_url}"
  end

[LasseRafn]

Awesome! Glad you managed to solve it and thanks for sharing solution 🙌🏻