Ladder is an open source platform for exchanging tickets written in the Django Web Framework.
It attempts to provide a simple, yet effective system for helping match people who have tickets with people need tickets, on a first-come first-serve basis. The system attempts to leverage the idea that most burners would like to know about the recipient of their ticket but allowing users to manually select a recipient for their ticket based on a personal message provided by the ticket requester.
Registration involves entering a valid email address and a display name. An email verification link is sent to the user, which will activate their account and allow them to set their password.
Once a user has activated their account, they must then provide a valid US phone number, which is verified by either a code sent by SMS, or via a phone call. (See Twilio under the requirements).
The phone verification step is meant to loosely enforce one account per person. While this is trivial for a motivated individual to bypass, it should help restrict abuse.
Once a user has verified a phone number they may then either offer or request a ticket. offering and requesting tickets are mutually exclusive (a user may either offer or request a ticket but not both)
A user have one active ticket request at any time. When creating a ticket request, the user is asked to enter a brief section of text about themselves (see manual ticket matching under ticket offers). When a ticket is found to fulfill the request, the user is contacted to confirm they still want/need a ticket. If they fail to respond within 48 hours, their ticket request is deactivated and the offered ticket can then be offered to another user.
A user may offer as many tickets as they want.
When the user creates the ticket offer, they may choose to automatically be matched with a ticket request, or to manually select that match.
- Automatic matches are made based on a first come first serve basis, so the oldest ticket requests will be fulfilled first.
- Manual matches are still done on a semi first come first serve basis. The user offering the ticket is presented with a small selection of the ticket requests from the front of the line and allowed to select which person they would like to give their ticket to, based on the personal message attached to each ticket request.
Once an offer and request have been paired, the requester is notified via sms and/or email, and given 48 hours to confirm the match.
- If the requester confirms, both users will be given each others contact information, and both the request and the offer are marked as being fulfilled.
- If the requester cancels the match or fails to respond to the confirmation request, their ticket request is cancelled, and the ticket offer is released back onto the market.
This app relies heavily on Twilio to interact with users via SMS and phone calls.