django-simple-avatar 0.8.6
django-simple-avatar
License: BSD
Keywords: avatar,django

Using django-simple-avatar
===================


Basics
------

To integrate ``django-simple-avatar`` with your site, there are relatively few things
that are required. A minimal integration can work like this:

1. List this application in the ``INSTALLED_APPS`` portion of your settings
file. Your settings file will look something like::
INSTALLED_APPS = (
# ...
'avatar',
)

2. Add the pagination urls to the end of your root urlconf. Your urlconf
will look something like::
urlpatterns = patterns('',
# ...
(r'^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root),
(r'^avatar/', include('simpleavatar.urls')),
)

3. Somewhere in your template navigation scheme, link to the change avatar
page::
<a href="{% url avatar_change %}">Change your avatar</a>

4. Wherever you want to display an avatar for a user, first load the avatar
template tags::
{% load avatar_tags %}
Then, use the ``avatar`` tag to display an avatar of a default size::
{% avatar user %}
Or specify a size (in pixels) explicitly::
{% avatar user 65 %}

5. Optionally customize ``avatar/change.html`` and
``avatar/confirm_delete.html`` to conform to your site's look and feel.


Views
-----

There are only two views for this application: one for changing a user's avatar,
and another for deleting a user's avatar.

Changing an avatar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The actual view function is located at ``avatar.views.change``, and this can
be referenced by the url name ``avatar_change``. It takes two keyword
arguments: ``extra_context`` and ``next_override``. If ``extra_context`` is
provided, that context will be placed into the template's context.

If ``next_override`` is provided, the user will be redirected to the specified
URL after form submission. Otherwise the user will be redirected to the URL
specified in the ``next`` parameter in ``request.POST``. If ``request.POST``
has no ``next`` parameter, ``request.GET`` will be searched. If ``request.GET``
has no ``next`` parameter, the ``HTTP_REFERER`` header will be inspected. If
that header does not exist, the user will be redirected back to the current URL.

Deleting an avatar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The actual view function is located at ``avatar.views.delete``, and this can be
referenced by the url name ``avatar_delete``. It takes the same two keyword
arguments as ``avatar.views.change`` and follows the same redirection rules
as well.


Template Tags
-------------

To begin using these template tags, you must first load the tags into the
template rendering system:

{% load avatar_tags %}

``{% avatar_url user [size in pixels] %}``
Renders the URL of the avatar for the given user. User can be either a
``django.contrib.auth.models.User`` object instance or a username.

``{% avatar user [size in pixels] %}``
Renders an HTML ``img`` tag for the given user for the specified size. User
can be either a ``django.contrib.auth.models.User`` object instance or a
username.

``{% render_avatar avatar [size in pixels] %}``
Given an actual ``avatar.models.Avatar`` object instance, renders an HTML
``img`` tag to represent that avatar at the requested size.


Global Settings
---------------

There are a number of settings available to easily customize the avatars that
appear on the site. Listed below are those settings:

AUTO_GENERATE_AVATAR_SIZES
An iterable of integers representing the sizes of avatars to generate on
upload. This can save rendering time later on if you pre-generate the
resized versions. Defaults to ``(80,)``

AVATAR_RESIZE_METHOD
The method to use when resizing images, based on the options available in
PIL. Defaults to ``Image.ANTIALIAS``.

AVATAR_STORAGE_DIR
The directory under ``MEDIA_ROOT`` to store the images. If using a
non-filesystem storage device, this will simply be appended to the beginning
of the file name.

AVATAR_GRAVATAR_BACKUP
A boolean determining whether to default to the Gravatar service if no
``Avatar`` instance is found in the system for the given user. Defaults to
True.

AVATAR_DEFAULT_URL
The default URL to default to if ``AVATAR_GRAVATAR_BACKUP`` is set to False
and there is no ``Avatar`` instance found in the system for the given user.