Letting Django superuser define new badges in gamification component

Question

We are implementing the gamification component of a project in Django. We would like the superuser to be able to define new badges and redefine existing ones inside the Django admin interface.

The problem as we see it is that defining the sometimes complicated conditions for badges needs to be done in code. The superuser will be technically knowledgeable, but will not be a programmer.

How would you go about letting the superuser do this in the Django admin interface, rather than alter the application?

Here are some examples of badges:

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You're asking a non programmer to do programming work? Is there a reason you can't have a programmer add the badges? — dan-klasson
After the development ends, our website is supposed to be handed over to a 'superuser' who takes care of future maintenance. According to the design, he/she'll probably needs to tinker various aspects of the site, including requirements for getting badges, creating new badges, etc., to keep the site balanced. — Xun Yang

Andrew Wilkinson Andrew Wilkinson · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-21T17:08:07

You don't say if you expect the superuser to be a programmer or not.

If you can assume this then you could include Python code in a database field and use eval or exec to run it.

For example:

badge.function = """
def award_badge(user):
    return False
"""

vars = {}
exec(badge.function, vars)

if vars["award_badge"](user):
    ...

Clearly this has a lot of scope for abuse or mistakes, and certainly wouldn't be suitable if you expect non-technical users to be creating badges.

Depending on the complexity of the rules you need to create you might be able to create rules engine for executing them. In this case you create a sort of mini-language where each step in the process of deciding whether to award a badge or not is specified by a row in the database. Rules engines are a complicated topic so I won't go into detail here.

You're probably better off hard coding the rules for badges in your code than using either of these suggestions.

Letting Django superuser define new badges in gamification component

1 Answers