This feature is only available with the following products:
When you retrieve the Master Roster or an Event Roster via an API, you can request the player photo to be included on each player record returned.
In order to implement this, it’s important to understand:
How photos are managed at the Master Roster and Event Roster level
How to use the API to retrieve the photos in conjunction with pairings and leaderboards
Photo Requirements
In this article, we will describe each of these in detail.
Managing Photos at Master Roster and Event Roster levels in Golf Genius:
When managing photos, it’s important to recognize that a player may participate in tournaments over the course of many years and that they will age over time. As they age, we can expect that their photo needs to be updated for the purpose of current/upcoming events, while their photo for past events should not change. For example, if we update a player’s photo at the age of 50, we don’t want the new photo to appear in an event that was conducted 20 years ago. So we need a way to manage the player’s current photo without disturbing the historical results.
With Golf Genius Tournament Management, a photo can be uploaded for any player in the Master Roster (at the Golf Genius account level) or the Event Roster (at the event level within a Golf Genius account). We assume you will maintain current player photos at the Master Roster level. Therefore, the following occurs:
When a player in the Master Roster logs in and registers for a particular event, the player’s Master Roster information (including the link to their photo) is copied into the Event Roster for that event.
If a player’s photo is subsequently updated at the Master Roster, it will NOT be copied down to the Event Roster for any existing events (because this would disturb past events).
If a player’s photo is subsequently updated at the Event Roster, it will NOT be copied up to the Master Roster. If you wish to use this updated photo in the Event Roster for that player going forward, you must also update the photo in the Master Roster.
Retrieving Photos via the API for use in displaying pairings or leaderboards:
We provide two approaches:
Recommended Approach: Photos are extracted from the Event Roster
Alternative Approach: Photos are extracted from the Master Roster
Recommended Approach:
The recommended approach is to extract the photos from the Event Roster. When using this approach, the following is recommended:
Prior to calling the leaderboard or pairings API, the API caller should invoke the Event Roster API to retrieve the event roster.
The caller must cache the results locally (with a mechanism to periodically invalidate/refresh the cache).
If the event roster spans multiple pages of results, the API caller will have to cycle through each page to retrieve and cache the entire roster.
The API caller must request photos to be included in the data returned from the Event Roster API call.
Pre-fetching and caching the Event Roster are critical to ensure good performance (instead of repeatedly calling the Event Roster API for every player in the pairings or leaderboard display).
When later calling the leaderboard API or pairings API:
The API caller can use the “member_card_id” field (on each record in the result set) to look up the player’s corresponding record in the locally cached Event Roster and collect the URL for the player photo.
The URL for each player photo can then be used when displaying pairings or leaderboards.
Alternative Approach:
Another approach is to extract photos from the Master Roster level (by pre-fetching and caching the Master Roster). When using this approach, the following is recommended:
Note: This approach is feasible if current photos are maintained in the Master Roster, and you are not concerned about maintaining prior event photos.
If this approach is taken, the API caller should understand that the Master Roster may be very large (perhaps thousands of players), while the Event Roster will typically be in the range of 50-200 players. Therefore, retrieving the Master Roster will incur a longer response time relative to retrieving the Event Roster.
Deciding whether to pull photos from the Master Roster or Event Roster is an implementation decision left to you, the Golf Genius customer and consumer of the API, depending on your particular circumstances and objectives.
Photo Requirements:
Golf Genius does not enforce size constraints or minimum photo resolution when uploading photos. However, the following should be considered:
The intended use of the photos and the size/resolution required to achieve the desired appearance and quality of rendering.
For example, if photos will appear as thumbnails shown on leaderboards rendered on a web page, lower resolution may be sufficient. Higher resolution may be required if the photo appears on a large physical screen.