Start Building for Free
CircleCI.comAcademyBlogCommunitySupport

Adding Status Badges

2 months ago1 min read
Cloud
Server v4.x
Server v3.x
On This Page

This document describes how to create a badge that displays your project’s build status (passed or failed) in a README or other document.

Overview

Status badges are commonly embedded in project READMEs, although they can be placed in any web document. CircleCI provides a tool to generate embed code for status badges. By default, a badge displays the status of a project’s default branch, though you can also display the status of specific branches.

A badge status allows teams to quickly see build statuses in their repo. Badges change appearance depending on their status (success, failure).

You can generate code for the following formats:

  • Image URL
  • Markdown
  • Textile
  • Rdoc
  • AsciiDoc
  • reStructuredText
  • pod

Generating a status badge

To generate your own status badge, you will need to know, and substitute, the following variables in the code snippets below:

  • <PROJECT_NAME> - Your project’s name. Example: circleci-docs
  • <ORG_NAME> - The organization or user name the project in question belongs to
  • <VCS> - your VCS provider (gh for “github” and bb for Bitbucket)
  • <LINK> - The link you want the status badge to go to when clicked (example: the pipeline overview page)
  • Optional: an API token (to create badges for private projects)

The following examples demonstrate how to generate a status badge for various template languages. Each example also provides a status badge code for a specific branch.

Creating badges for private repositories

NOTE: To create a status badge for a private project you will need to create an api token specifically scoped to “status” and include that token in the url string of your badge. Consider the following markdown image badge snippet against the original markdown example above; it has a URL parameter for a token added.

[![CircleCI](https://circleci.com/<VCS>/<ORG_NAME>/<PROJECT_NAME>.svg?style=svg&circle-token=<YOUR_STATUS_API_TOKEN>)](<LINK>)

To create a status API token, go to the CircleCI web app, navigate to a specific project, go to Project Settings -> API Permissions, and create a token scoped to status.

Different styles

If you find the default status badge too minimal, you can use the shield style. To use the shield style, replace style=svg with style=shield in the link you generated above.

Passed `svg` version

Failed `svg` version

Passing shield version

Failing shield version


Help make this document better

This guide, as well as the rest of our docs, are open source and available on GitHub. We welcome your contributions.

Need support?

Our support engineers are available to help with service issues, billing, or account related questions, and can help troubleshoot build configurations. Contact our support engineers by opening a ticket.

You can also visit our support site to find support articles, community forums, and training resources.