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How do badges get awarded? By a service or on change?

I was surprised by the system that awards badges whenever a certain task is completed. How is that implemented? Does it use triggers in the database? Is it done purely in code? If it is code, what is the design?

I realize that maybe no-one knows the exact answer, but how do you think it's implemented?

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marked as duplicate by Lance Roberts, Pops, mmyers Oct 11 '11 at 17:11


BD = BetaDase?? –  JNK Oct 10 '11 at 20:43
Sorry I am Spanish (Base de Datos) LOL –  eversor Oct 10 '11 at 20:48

2 Answers 2

From what I've understood, at least some are implemented as timed jobs that periodically check if a new badge should be awarded. I assume these run on different intervals depending on the badge.

I don't know if some of the more trivial badges are awarded based on a trigger, or if the job just runs really frequently for those. They appear to be awarded quite quickly.

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But don't you think thats a huge use of resources, i mean, if for each badge you have to check a great amount of users... –  eversor Oct 10 '11 at 20:56
@eversor: For those that can be hooked to triggers, not really, especially if indices are set up intelligently. Some of the others are only scanned for occasionally (once a day?) so they could be quite expensive I suppose. –  Donal Fellows Oct 10 '11 at 22:16

Only the developers can answer this 100% which I doubt they will, as programmers prefer to keep the code/logic behind hidden.

From what I've seen, all the "first time you [action here]" badges are awarded instantly - no timed job in this case. So this means code running in every relevant place checking if it's your first [something here] it will add a badge.

More complex badges like Revival (Answered more than 30 days later as first answer scoring 2 or more) already requires checking more conditions, so most lilkely it's done by some timed job probably every few hours.

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"I doubt they will, as programmers prefer to keep the code/logic behind hidden" -- I think SO is a bit different; multiple times I've seen devs post actual code snippets when explaining how something works/what was wrong –  Michael Mrozek Oct 11 '11 at 11:37
@MichaelMrozek true, hope this will be the case on this matter too. :) –  Shadow Wizard Oct 11 '11 at 11:41

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