I was working on a project a while ago with user comments, and wanted each person to have their own avatar, however, the Gravatar plugins that existed for Rails were overkill for my needs.

So I wrote this simple helper method. Either copy the method into your application_helper.rb, or alternatively drop it into your lib directory and include it.

module GravatarHelper

  def gravatize(email, options={})
    default_options = {:size => 60}
    options = default_options.update(options)
    crypted_email = Digest::MD5.hexdigest(email)
    output = "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/#{crypted_email}?s=#{options[:size]}"
    return image_tag(output)
  end

end

Usage is as simple as just calling:

gravatize(user.email, :size => 50)

This will just render the Gravatar inside an image tag, simple no!