/headhunter

giving Twitter avatars a permanent URL

Primary LanguageRubyMIT LicenseMIT

About

Headhunter is giving Twitter avatars a permanent URL.

In the words of Remy Sharp, creator of the late Twivatar:

If you've built an app that caches a Twitter user's avatar, and that user changes their avatar, the link breaks, thus breaking your app.

Let this tiny Sinatra app do the hunting for you.

Usage

    <img src="http://headhunter.heroku.com/[username]" />

Unlike Twivatar, you can't specify a size. If you feel like it, hack away and send me a patch.

If this app doesn't work as advertized, it may have exceeded the Twitter API rate limit. (Check if the Google-O-Meter on the homepage is in the red area.)
In that case, please consider deploying your own copy on Heroku.

Why not self-host Twivatar?

For a number of reasons (this list has grown since I started working on headhunter):

  1. It didn't work out of the box
  2. There is no documentation -- which is what you'd need if you face reason #1
  3. There are no tests -- which is what you'd need if you face reasons #1 and #2
  4. It uses a relational database for caching
  5. It uses REPLACE, a MySQL extension to the SQL standard, which locks you in