How should i check if gravatar exist?

Question

using this gem https://github.com/sinisterchipmunk/gravatar how do i check if gravatar for specified email exist or not? I think i am missing some force default option? Because this

url = Gravatar.new("[email protected]").image_url

always return a picture

Answer 1

In case people would like to know how to do it without any gems :

The trick is to get gravatar image with a false default image and then check header response. It's achieved with the Net::HTTP ruby library.

require 'net/http'

def gravatar?(user)
    gravatar_check = "http://gravatar.com/avatar/#{Digest::MD5.hexdigest(user.gravatar_email.downcase)}.png?d=404"
    uri = URI.parse(gravatar_check)
    http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
    request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)
    response = http.request(request)
    response.code.to_i != 404 # from d=404 parameter
end