Accessing Author information for custom component

Thanks for the inspiration to change the author's component, Claudius. A big improvement over the default.

I rebuilt our author component to use on the forum message page, and I wanted to share the code here. I think it uses a rest call instead of the env context object, but works all the same. It reorders it from the default, and adds kudos count. The <i> tags--such as <i class="fa fa-comment"></i>--are pulling icons from the Font Awesome icon set. The design is not final yet, but it looks something like this.

<#--Custom author component with new order: Avatar, rank, posts, kudos. Original author component XML is     <component id="author"/> -->

<#assign messageAuthorId = rest("/messages/id/${page.context.message.uniqueId}/author").user.id />
<#assign messageAuthorLogin = rest("/messages/id/${page.context.message.uniqueId}/author").user.login />
<#assign avatarUrl = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/profiles/avatar/url").value />
<#assign kudosCount = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/kudos/received/count").value />
<#assign postCount = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/posts/count").value />
<#assign rankingName = rest("users/id/${messageAuthorId}/ranking/name").value />
<#assign profileUrl = "/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/${messageAuthorId}" />

<div class="lia-message-author-avatar">    
    <div class="custom-avatar-wrapper">
        <div class="UserAvatar lia-user-avatar lia-component-common-widget-user-avatar">
            <a class="UserAvatar lia-link-navigation" tabindex="-1" target="_self" id="link_39" href="${profileUrl}"><img class="lia-user-avatar-message" id="display" src="${avatarUrl}"></a>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-username">
    <span class="UserName lia-user-name">
        <a class="lia-link-navigation lia-page-link lia-user-name-link" href="${profileUrl}">
            <span class="">${messageAuthorLogin}</span>
        </a>
    </span>    
</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-rank">${rankingName}</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-post-count" title="Number of posts by this author"><i class="fa fa-comment"></i> ${postCount}</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-kudos-count" title="Number of votes received by this author"><i class="fa fa-thumbs-up"></i> ${kudosCount}</div>

UPDATE: Here is the same code, updated to avoid an error on the ReplyPage by defaulting to the original author component:

<#--Custom author component with new order: Avatar, rank, posts, kudos. Original author component XML is     <component id="author"/>. On Reply page, defaults to Out-of-the-box author component. -->

<#if page.name?lower_case == "replypage" >
    <@component id="author"/>
<#else>

<#assign messageAuthorId = rest("/messages/id/${page.context.message.uniqueId}/author").user.id />
<#assign messageAuthorLogin = rest("/messages/id/${page.context.message.uniqueId}/author").user.login />
<#assign avatarUrl = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/profiles/avatar/url").value />
<#assign kudosCount = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/kudos/received/count").value />
<#assign postCount = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/posts/count").value />
<#assign rankingName = rest("users/id/${messageAuthorId}/ranking/name").value />
<#assign profileUrl = "/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/${messageAuthorId}" />

<div class="lia-message-author-avatar">    
    <div class="custom-avatar-wrapper">
        <div class="UserAvatar lia-user-avatar lia-component-common-widget-user-avatar">
            <a class="UserAvatar lia-link-navigation" tabindex="-1" target="_self" id="link_39" href="${profileUrl}"><img class="lia-user-avatar-message" id="display" src="${avatarUrl}"></a>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-username">
    <span class="UserName lia-user-name">
        <a class="lia-link-navigation lia-page-link lia-user-name-link" href="${profileUrl}">
            <span class="">${messageAuthorLogin}</span>
        </a>
    </span>    
</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-rank">${rankingName}</div>
    <div class="lia-message-author-post-count" title="Number of posts by this author">
        <table>
            <tr><td class="fonticon"><i class="fa fa-comment"></i></td><td class="count">${postCount}</td></tr>
        </table>
    </div>
</tr>
<div class="lia-message-author-kudos-count" title="Number of votes received by this author">
        <table>
            <tr><td class="fonticon"><i class="fa fa-thumbs-up"></i></td><td class="count">${kudosCount}</td></tr>
        </table>
</div>
</#if>

Another update. Forgot to use the "env" object instead of "page" object, as described in this post. This produced the humorous result of every post being authored by the first messageauthor on any given page. Here it is:

<#--Custom author component with new order: Avatar, rank, posts, kudos. Original author component XML is     <component id="author"/>. On Reply page, defaults to Out-of-the-box author component. -->

<#if page.name?lower_case == "replypage" >
    <@component id="author"/>
<#else>

<#assign messageAuthorId = env.context.message.author.id />
<#assign messageAuthorLogin = env.context.message.author.login />
<#assign avatarUrl = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/profiles/avatar/url").value />
<#assign kudosCount = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/kudos/received/count").value />
<#assign postCount = rest("/users/id/${messageAuthorId}/posts/count").value />
<#assign rankingName = rest("users/id/${messageAuthorId}/ranking/name").value />
<#assign profileUrl = "/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/${messageAuthorId}" />

<div class="lia-message-author-avatar">    
    <div class="custom-avatar-wrapper">
        <div class="UserAvatar lia-user-avatar lia-component-common-widget-user-avatar">
            <a class="UserAvatar lia-link-navigation" tabindex="-1" target="_self" id="link_39" href="${profileUrl}"><img class="lia-user-avatar-message" id="display" src="${avatarUrl}"></a>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-username">
    <span class="UserName lia-user-name">
        <a class="lia-link-navigation lia-page-link lia-user-name-link" href="${profileUrl}">
            <span class="">${messageAuthorLogin}</span>
        </a>
    </span>    
</div>
<div class="lia-message-author-rank">${rankingName}</div>
    <div class="lia-message-author-post-count" title="Number of posts by this author">
        <table>
            <tr><td class="fonticon"><i class="fa fa-comment"></i></td><td class="count">${postCount}</td></tr>
        </table>
    </div>
</tr>
<div class="lia-message-author-kudos-count" title="Number of votes received by this author">
        <table>
            <tr><td class="fonticon"><i class="fa fa-thumbs-up"></i></td><td class="count">${kudosCount}</td></tr>
        </table>
</div>
</#if>