This is such a great use of an API—you can choose to view an object in the museum’s collection that no one else has seen yet.
It’s like the opposite of Amazon’s recommendation engine: “No one has ever purchased these items together…”
This post goes into specifics on Django, but the broader points apply no matter what your tech stack. I’m relieved to find out that The Session is using the tripartite identity pattern (although Huffduffer, alas, isn’t):
What we really want in terms of identifying users is some combination of:
- System-level identifier, suitable for use as a target of foreign keys in our database
- Login identifier, suitable for use in performing a credential check
- Public identity, suitable for displaying to other users
Many systems ask the username to fulfill all three of these roles, which is probably wrong.
Nice QR code patches (I don't mean something that patches code, I mean a patch that you sew).