Letter avatar like Gmail Android best practice

Question

What is the best way of generating (in code) a letter avatar like in Gmail? Here you have an example https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0Fhz5fDg1njSmpUakhhZllEWHM&usp=sharing

It should look like that:

Answer 1

This is what I've used once.. please try and modify according to your requirements.

    public class LetterAvatar extends ColorDrawable {
Paint               paint   = new Paint();
Rect                bounds  = new Rect();

String              pLetters;
private float       ONE_DP  = 0.0f;
private Resources   pResources;
private int         pPadding;
int                 pSize   = 0;
float               pMesuredTextWidth;

int                 pBoundsTextwidth;
int                 pBoundsTextHeight;

public LetterAvatar (Context context, int color, String letter, int paddingInDp) {
    super(color);
    this.pLetters = letter;
    this.pResources = context.getResources();
    ONE_DP = 1 * pResources.getDisplayMetrics().density;
    this.pPadding = Math.round(paddingInDp * ONE_DP);
}

@Override
public void draw(Canvas canvas) {
    super.draw(canvas);
    paint.setAntiAlias(true);



    do {
        paint.setTextSize(++pSize);
        paint.getTextBounds(pLetters, 0, pLetters.length(), bounds);

    } while ((bounds.height() < (canvas.getHeight() - pPadding)) && (paint.measureText(pLetters) < (canvas.getWidth() - pPadding)));

    paint.setTextSize(pSize); 
    pMesuredTextWidth = paint.measureText(pLetters);
    pBoundsTextHeight = bounds.height();

    float xOffset = ((canvas.getWidth() - pMesuredTextWidth) / 2);
    float yOffset = (int) (pBoundsTextHeight + (canvas.getHeight() - pBoundsTextHeight) / 2);
    paint.setTypeface(Typeface.defaultFromStyle(Typeface.BOLD));
    paint.setColor(0xffffffff);
    canvas.drawText(pLetters, xOffset, yOffset, paint);
}
    }

then set new LetterAvatar(context, colorCode, letters, padding) in your imageview.setdrawable