BuddyPress.org

@modemlooper understood, I was thinking that since that SQL queries pulls the userid I could somehow tie in bp_core_fetch_avatar into the equation?

Found the avatar filters but not sure how to change it to display the associated group avatar.

$object = apply_filters( ‘bp_get_activity_avatar_object_’ . $current_activity_item->component, ‘user’ );

return apply_filters( ‘bp_get_activity_avatar’, bp_core_fetch_avatar( array( ‘item_id’ => $item_id, ‘object’ => $object, ‘type’ => $type, ‘alt’ => $alt, ‘class’ => $class, ‘width’ => $width, ‘height’ => $height, ’email’ => $email ) ) );

EDIT: seems just changing user to groups will get the image.

Solution: Getting the URL with bp_core_fetch_avatar() and using the option ‘html’ => false to get group images by URL rather then a whole image tag.

IE:
`
$avatar_options = array ( ‘item_id’ => ‘1’, ‘object’ => ‘group’, ‘type’ => ‘full’, ‘avatar_dir’ => ‘group-avatars’, ‘alt’ => ‘Group avatar’, ‘css_id’ => 1234, ‘class’ => ‘avatar’, ‘width’ => 50, ‘height’ => 50, ‘html’ => false );

$result = bp_core_fetch_avatar($avatar_options);
`

Looking at this particular code makes me nervous about performance. Is it necessary to read from the database and the filesystem to get this type of resource? I sure hope there’s some caching going on somewhere.

Alright, drilling down a bit further, in bp-groups/bp-grouptemplatetags.php, around line 279, there’s our bp_get_group_avatar() method.

`
function bp_get_group_avatar( $args = ” ) {
global $bp, $groups_template;

$defaults = array(
‘type’ => ‘full’,
‘width’ => false,
‘height’ => false,
‘class’ => ‘avatar’,
‘id’ => false,
‘alt’ => __( ‘Group avatar’, ‘buddypress’ )
);

$r = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );

extract( $r, EXTR_SKIP );
var_dump(‘buddypress group_avatar_call’, bp_core_fetch_avatar( array( ‘item_id’ => $groups_template->group->id, ‘object’ => ‘group’, ‘type’ => $type, ‘avatar_dir’ => ‘group-avatars’, ‘alt’ => $alt, ‘css_id’ => $id, ‘class’ => $class, ‘width’ => $width, ‘height’ => $height )) );
/* Fetch the avatar from the folder, if not provide backwards compat. */
if ( !$avatar = bp_core_fetch_avatar( array( ‘item_id’ => $groups_template->group->id, ‘object’ => ‘group’, ‘type’ => $type, ‘avatar_dir’ => ‘group-avatars’, ‘alt’ => $alt, ‘css_id’ => $id, ‘class’ => $class, ‘width’ => $width, ‘height’ => $height ) ) )
$avatar = ‘group->avatar_thumb ) . ‘” class=”avatar” alt=”‘ . esc_attr( $groups_template->group->name ) . ‘” />’;

return apply_filters( ‘bp_get_group_avatar’, $avatar );
}
`

So I’ve var dumped the parameters that are used for bp_core_fetch_avatar() when it’s called from the default group landing page, then var_export($args, true) and copied that output directly to my own code and surprisingly, I get the same result as before, a blank img tag. So, this leads me to believe that this method is not meant to be used in the way I am using it.

As I find a better solution, I will follow up in case this is useful to someone else.

@djpaul: Thanks Paul, I would really appreciate any thoughts and feedback when its out, as I can imagine the coding will be a little hazy in places. Should be fairly easy to understand though.

Good news all… I’ve finally got this working as intended, and I’m currently in the process of packing it all together in to a plugin for release to the community over the next few days. Just creating a small webpage where people can download it, and I’ll hopefully have an online user guide.

Screenshot:
http://www.obscuresounds.com/obscureavatar-beta.jpg

For now it works like this:

1. designers can create transparent png “parts” of an avatar divided in to 3 sections (body, face, head).
2. the plugin can differentiate between male and female by parsing in a string (m, or f), so again designers can create gender specific avatars based on needs.
3. users who upload avatars via BP will bypass obscureavatars, and the plugin will only use gravatar as a last resort for groups, and blogs.
4. it works for both wordpress, and buddypress.

Essentially it sets out to do what I’ve wanted – to make the avatars a bit easier to work with for designers. Although I mainly develop backend stuff I love UI design, and one thing I’ve noticed is that pretty much all wordpress projects either use gravatars tacky generated content, or the dull wordpress avatar. Not only that but they fail to facilitate basic gender styles, which is essential for social network propagation now-days.

I want to continue developing this in to something more sophisticated (I’m thinking it would be cool if designers could zip their parts in to packs, so that people can interchange them in an instant), but I will only be able to do this based on its popularity and support.

Hmm… ok thanks. I copied the file from that template and pasted it in my file. Looks like it fixed that error but now i got another one!!

`Fatal error: Call to undefined function: bp_core_fetch_avatar( $args = ” ) in /home/***/****/****/bp-core/bp-core-avatars.php on line 60`

@Reezo, @Dimensionmedia:

Thanks guys… sorry for taking such a long time to update on this. Ended up having to work on some other projects. I’ve managed to get the custom avatar generator to function okay now, and have a live project that uses it (http://school.ocdaction.org.uk/), but I need to tidy up the code a little. At the moment I’m having to plug the wordpress avatar function (get_avatar) and use that for my rendering duties. What I’d like to happen is for the bp dev team to make their bp_core_fetch_avatar pluggable, as it doesnt really have much scope for extending in its current state. Maybe I’m wrong, but if someone has more knowledge of how to alter bp_core_fetch_avatar for my needs then that would be awesome. I did think of filtering, but one aspect of bp_core_fetch_avatar I don’t particulary see the need of is that it pushes the final img url through http://www.gravatar.com, which in my opinion is a wasted resource, as this plugin would only read directly off the parts folder when it generates an avatar, and then loads from a cache dir.

Welcome any thoughts on this.