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Comment by culturestate | Hacker News Reader

> there was nothing specific that the mobile app could do that a simple website couldn’t … I’m sure even a printed QR code would of sufficed.

I don’t know about that app specifically, but most of the major ticketing providers are doing dynamic barcodes[1] now that are effectively TOTPs for entry. You can’t do this reliably on the web for a major event because you can’t assume network connectivity, and obviously a printout or screenshot won’t work.

1. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/16/ticketmaster-put-an-end-to...

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> You can’t do this reliably on the web for a major event because you can’t assume network connectivity

I can't believe I'm saying this, but you could've use PWA instead (except for brightness).

You're not wrong, but the pushback for doing an app like this as a PWA will always be discoverability - it's a lot easier to just say "search UEFA 22 in the App Store" than it is to point people to a URL and teach them how to use the add to Home Screen functionality.

But dont these apps require network access to function?

Not at the venue, no. The relevant tokens are saved locally and the barcodes are rendered on-device once you’ve accessed the ticket, which you can do hours/days in advance.

Some of TicketMaster’s API docs for this are publicly available so you can get an idea of how it works - https://developer.ticketmaster.com/products-and-docs/apis/pa...

How exactly does that not work with browsers and local storage though? It seems like they're just caching stuff in the app and they definitely can do the same in browser storage.

> How exactly does that not work with browsers and local storage though?

On iOS, at least, local storage for web apps doesn't have guaranteed persistence. Safari can and will "randomly" clean up, usually if the device is low on storage. This happens less frequently for pinned PWAs but still happens.

If you need to absolutely guarantee that your thing will work on an offline mobile device, you have to use a native app.

I just used (against my will) the Axs app to go to a local show. It required location services to be enabled and didn't show the random qr code until it could verify I was at the venue.

I haven't seen a paper ticket in a long time.

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