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Badges API

The Moodle Badges API facilitates the creation and management of site and course-specific badges, enabling their export to external Open Badges compliant platforms, often referred to as "backpacks".

Evolution of Open Badges​

The Open Badges standard, designed to recognize and verify learning achievements, has evolved significantly since its beginning. The Mozilla Foundation launched the initial version in 2012 with Open Badges 1.0 and its "Backpack" platform. Over time, the standard matured, with Open Badges 2.0 officially released by the IMS Global Learning Consortium (now 1EdTech) on April 12, 2018.

Following the release of Open Badges 2.0, Mozilla announced the retirement of its Backpack program in late 2018. This led to a migration to Concentric Sky's (now Instructure's) Badgr platform, which started in August 2019. More recently, in April 2022, Canvas LMS acquired Concentric Sky, the creators of Badgr.

While many providers support Open Badges 2.0, Badgr offers a unique API implementation, inherited from Mozilla (detailed at https://api.badgr.io/swagger-ui/index.html). Moodle directly supports this specific API. This is important because the Open Badges 2.0 specification defines the badge data itself, but not the protocol for interchanging badges.

Badges data (JSON)​

Each badge is represented as a JSON object with the following structure:

Example Open Badge v2.0/v2.1 JSON
{
  "@context": "https://w3id.org/openbadges/v2",
  "type": "BadgeClass",
  "id": "https://example.com/badges/12345",
  "name": "Example Badge",
  "description": "This badge represents an example achievement.",
  "image": "https://example.com/images/badge.png",
  "criteria": {
    "narrative": "To earn this badge, you must complete the example task."
  },
  "issuer": {
    "type": "Issuer",
    "id": "https://example.com/issuers/67890",
    "name": "Example Issuer",
    "url": "https://example.com"
  }
}

Each version of Open Badges uses its own JSON schema to define the badge's data. Currently, Moodle supports Open Badges 2.0 and 2.1, which share the same schema. In the near future, it will also support Open Badges 3.0, which has a different schema.

To manage these different versions and their unique requirements, each Open Badge version requires a specific folder structure containing its respective exporters. The structure is as follows:

Folder structure for Open Badges exporters
├── local/backpack/ob/v2p0/
│   ├── assertion_exporter.php
│   ├── badge_exporter.php
│   ├── issuer_exporter.php
│   ├── recipient_exporter.php
│   ├── revoked_assertion_exporter.php

The JSON files are generated by calling the exporters located in the respective version folders. They can be accessed from the badges/json/ folder, specified by the version number in the URL. For example, to access the Open Badges 2.0 JSON, you would use:

Accessing Open Badges v2.0 assertion JSON
https://yourmoodlesite.com/badges/json/assertion.php?b=assertionhash&obversion=v2p0

See also​