Minidenticons

Super lightweight SVG identicon generator. No dependencies.

^{(using the custom element)}

^{(custom element tree-shaken)}

Why

Generate identicons (pixelated avatars) on the client from usernames instead of fetching images from a server!

Live Demo 🎮

Play with it here.

On Browser

Minidenticons uses ES modules, now widely supported in browsers.

Using the identicon-svg custom element

Import the identicon-svg custom element from the minidenticons.min.js file. This file can be located in a CDN (example below) or copied in any directory of your website (for better performance, since you don’t have to connect to the CDN).

<script type="module">
  import { identiconSvg } from 'https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/minidenticons.min.js'
</script>

Then simply use identicon-svg tags with a username attribute 😂

<identicon-svg username="alienHead66">

For instance with the alienHead66 username you will get the following identicon (without the border):

• Note that the picture above is resized. By default identicons will take all the space available.

• The white space around the colored squares is here to allow uncropped circle avatars like the ones you can see in the demo.

Color Customization

By default the color saturation and lightness are set to 50%. But you can change these values with the saturation and/or lightness attributes, for instance:

<identicon-svg username="alienHead66" saturation="95" lightness="60">

Play with the demo to find a combination of saturation and lightness that matches your website theme colors: light, dark, pastel or whatever 😎

Using the identicon function

Alternatively, instead of identiconSvg, you can also import the identicon function described in the NodeJS section below and use it to generate SVG strings in your browser.

On NodeJS

Be sure to use a NodeJS version greater or equal to 14.0.0.

Installation

npm install minidenticons

Import

import { identicon } from 'minidenticons'

The identicon-svg custom element should be tree-shaken from your bundle, for an even smaller size of minidenticons 😁

Usage

identicon(username: string, saturation?: number|string, lightness?: number|string): string

The identicon function will return a SVG string generated from its username string argument. The optional saturation and lightness arguments should be percentages; that is, numbers (or strings) between 0 and 100.

Framework integrations

React

Here are some CodePen examples on how to use Minidenticons as a React function component:

• Using the custom element
• Directly using the identicon function with React dangerouslySetInnerHTML

If you think of a different way to integrate Minidenticons into React feel free to comment this issue. Thanks!

Workbox

In this example using Workbox, identicons are generated by the service worker and cached for one year. They can be displayed and downloaded like normal images with a path ending with identicons/<username>.svg.

registerRoute(
  /identicons\/[^\/]+\.svg$/,
  async ({ url }) => {
    const username = url.pathname.match(/([^\/]+)\.svg$/)[1]
    return new Response(
      identicon(username),
      { headers: { "Content-Type": "image/svg+xml", "Cache-Control": "max-age=31536000" } }
    )
  }
)

Elm

For Elm enthusiasts there is a Minidenticons package on the Elm package repository: minidenticons-elm.

Collisions

You will always get the same identicon for a given username. But it is not impossible to have different usernames with the same identicon. That's a collision.

Generated identicons are 5×5 pixels large with vertical symmetry, and can have 18 different hues for the same saturation and lightness. This means there are 2^(3×5) × 18 = 589,824 different identicons possible, but actually much less because of the modulo-based algorithm used to get more colored pixels at the center of the identicon instead of having them scattered. So duplicate identicons are inevitable when using a lot of them. It shouldn’t matter as identicons should not be used solely to identify an user, and should always be coupled to a unique username 😉

The npm test command results below show that you have roughly a 7% chance to generate a duplicate identicon when already using 1000 of them.

0 collisions out of 100 (0.00%)
0 collisions out of 200 (0.00%)
2 collisions out of 300 (0.67%)
6 collisions out of 400 (1.50%)
11 collisions out of 500 (2.20%)
21 collisions out of 600 (3.50%)
38 collisions out of 700 (5.43%)
49 collisions out of 800 (6.13%)
55 collisions out of 900 (6.11%)
66 collisions out of 1000 (6.60%)
296 collisions out of 2000 (14.80%)
589 collisions out of 3000 (19.63%)
962 collisions out of 4000 (24.05%)
1441 collisions out of 5000 (28.82%)
1965 collisions out of 6000 (32.75%)
2564 collisions out of 7000 (36.63%)
3173 collisions out of 8000 (39.66%)
3860 collisions out of 9000 (42.89%)
4570 collisions out of 10000 (45.70%)

Performance

Minidenticons are fast.

• To see how long it takes for your browser to generate 300 identicons (for a big page) try out the online benchmark.

• The same benchmark is available for NodeJS. Simply run node benchmark/node at the root of a Minidenticons git clone.

License

MIT

Stargazers ❤️