Experimental Features/Changes

• Image Output

http://se-flair.appspot.com/png/[association-id]/ will produce a PNG of the flair. Samples (direct from se-flair.appspot.com, not screenshots):

my PNG flair http://se-flair.appspot.com/png/ed3135bb-6f1d-487b-9930-85a7eb3a675b/ Jeff Atwood's PNG flair http://se-flair.appspot.com/png/febfb878-3f6f-4215-9323-46d15d62ac7d/ Jon Skeet's flair http://se-flair.appspot.com/png/a1c71168-ffb9-42a5-8d71-ce38ad8f2c79/

Complete image output is currently cached for up to 1 hour.

• Experiment in Faster Loading (HTML, JS, and PNG output)

In an attempt to curtail some of the longer delays in loading (particularly those that were causing the request to hit the time limit and result in an Internal Server Error), the loading of badge counts is now done more asynchronously than before. If badge counts are not loaded within a second or two, the flair will be returned without badge counts (the next load will try again to see if the badge counts have finished loading yet, etc.), rather than presenting the incomplete badge counts with a (?). The data used to generate badge counts is now cached for up to 24 hours (rep data is still cached for a maximum of 8 hours).

Revision History

2011-02-26: The "internal server error" issue seems to have been a problem with loading badge counts. Now, in instances where there is a problem loading badge counts for a user on a particular site, it is counted as zero badges from that site to allow loading to complete. Retrieval of the badge count is retried on the next load.

2011-02-28: In the case described above, where some badge counts are assumed to be zero because of a failed API call, a small (?) will appear to the right of and slightly above the badge counts with the title text "data may be incomplete". [superseded by 2011-03-16] (As above, the API call to get the badge counts will be tried again on the next load.) Also, requests using the 32-character hexadecimal string association id without the 4 hyphens are now redirected to the URL with the 36-character association id (with the 4 hyphens in place).

2011-03-02: Fixed "internal server error" issue for users for whom their Area 51 account is their highest-rep account. (Since there is no API access to Area 51 data, the data on the Area 51 account is generated by running some regexes against the HTML of the user page; previous versions neglected to pull the display name and email hash for Area 51—the display name and email hash of the highest-rep account are used for the gravatar and display name in the generated output.)

2011-03-05: Added a work-around for a bug where the StackAuth 1.1 API returns an invalid user_id, and some improved error-handling.

2011-03-06: Total rep is now rounded rather than truncated (as is the case in StackExchange-produced flair); diamond is shown if moderator on highest-rep site and diamond and count are shown if moderator on other sites; display-name color fixed.

2011-03-07: Javascript embedding method added; all links now target _blank so as to open in a new window/tab; http://se-flair.appspot.com/[site hostname]/[site user_id]/ (or http://se-flair.appspot.com/js/[site hostname]/[site user_id]/) now displays a link to the correct URL rather than redirecting to it.

2011-03-13: Added experimental image output.

2011-03-16: Initiated experiment in faster loading—badge-loading is more often delayed, but overall flair loads faster, just omitting badge counts if they are unavailable.

2011-03-17: Issues with label placement and bad rendering of favicons seem to be corrected now; if badge counts are not complete at time of loading, they are not displayed (but they will be rechecked on the next load).

2011-03-20: Fixed internal server error in case where StackAuth 1.1 API call reports an account with no site_name.

2011-03-22: Fixed error with applying topn parameter (e.g. top4) to image output; hid badge types with a count of 0; added facility to get copyable embedding code based on a profile page URL.

2011-03-28: Fixed issue with incorrect rounding in display of total rep in some instances.