Get GitHub avatar from email or name

Question

I'm trying to get the GitHub user picture (avatar) from users of GitHub.

I've found these API:

https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/<username> https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/<userid> 

But I can't find a way to get the avatar from the user email or the user display name. I can't find documentation about that.

Is there some similar URL API to get what I'm looking for?

Answer 1

You can append .png to the URL for the User's profile to get redirected to their avatar. You can add the query param size to specify a size smaller than the default of 460px wide (i.e. it won't allow larger than 460).

Examples:

https://github.com/twbs.png

https://github.com/npm.png?size=200

https://github.com/github.png?size=40

Answer 2

https://developer.github.com/v3/users/#get-a-single-user

Use the /users/:user endpoint. Should be under avatar_url in the returned json.

For example, my avatar_url can be found by hitting this url.

Edit

There is another way I can think of that is kind of roundabout. Since GitHub uses Gravatar, if you know the email associated with the account, do an md5 hash of the lowercase, stripped email address and construct a url like http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/[md5_here].