Create an Avatar Component in Gatsby with TypeScript Part 1

In this series, we're going to take a look at creating a simple avatar component that is typed with TypeScript and has some special goodies in Gatsby land.

I usually write TypeScript from the start but I wanted to show each piece individually in case others aren't familiar with TypeScript yet.

Let's start by identifying what our needs are for our avatar component.

• [ ] Should show an image
• [ ] Should be round
• [ ] Should accept an image URL
• [ ] Should display an image based on name (for small sets)

Cool, now we can start building our avatar. Start with an img element using a placeholder image as src. Add a little bit of styling to make it round and give it a size.

function Avatar(props){

    const {url, altText, title} = props;

    const styles = {
        width: '75px',
        height: '75px',
        borderRadius: '50%'
    }

    return (
        <img
            style={styles}
            src={url}
            alt={altText}
            title={title} />
    );
}

export default Avatar;

Then we can pass it the image URL and alt text. We can see that the component is working in its basic implementation now.

<Avatar
    url="https://res.cloudinary.com/joelmturner/monster-01.png"
    alText='Monster P. Whittington portrait'
    title='Monster P. Whittington' />

• [x] Should show an image
• [x] Should be round
• [x] Should accept an image URL
• [ ] Should display an image based on name (for small sets)

Looks good. We've met our first three criteria for this component. In part 2 we'll make it more powerful with Gatsby Image.