Dhivatars - The Dhivehi Avatar API

The Goal

To give the user a default avatar if they have not uploaded a profile photo.

The Challenge

Getting the default avatar to have the user's Dhivehi name initial, instead of English initial.

The Process

At first it was just an idea. I was just lying in bed, talking to the guys and just spewing out my thoughts on a cool project idea. In this stage, I simply called it "Dhivehi avatars" in my head. There was no set name.

I spew out my thoughts about the project and how it should be designed, the features and the extra features that make it oh so unique from all other avatar API services.

The most unique feature of this service, would be that a specific word combination would always have its own unique avatar. So if you type "އަހުމަދު", you will always get the same avatar. "އަހުމަދު" will always get his same avatar. If multiple websites use this service, and އަހުމަދު is registered in all these websites, he would see his unique avatar on all the websites.

Couple hours later, @phoenixatom replies back to my messages with a git repo, with code that is ready to be used to generate avatars, to my exact specification. An absolute mad lad.

Now this was just code that saved the generated PNG file. Far from what Dhivatars is now. Time to make this into a real API so that other people can use it. I have been experimenting with FastAPI for quickly making APIs and thought that I should make the project in it. Fast forward a couple days, and now we have working endpoints with url parameters for name, size, background and font color.

The Results

https://dhivatars.com/api/?name=އަތްފާން&size=300&background=ABABAB

What is it called?

It's a service that give you avatars. Avatars in Dhivehi. A new service, that gives you "Dhivehi Avatars".

There was only one, clear choice.

Available at https://dhivatars.com