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Comment by jka | Hacker News Reader

The 'Open Food Facts' and 'Open Product Data' projects could be of interest for barcodes:

https://world.openfoodfacts.org/

I just tested Product Open Data using the barcode from a can of Coconut Milk from my cupboard, and it returned the correct product (including a photograph) and the name of the brand and their owner.

Edit: updated to add Open Food Facts, given that Open Product Data appears no-longer-maintained

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Yeah tried it with a variety of products. It doesn't know about enough products, makes entry unreliable. Think of utmost importance here is that the entry works very reliably, if I have to fallback to manual entry on every fifth product, that sucks

If you contribute to Open Food Facts though, you're helping contribute to the database, making it better for everyone. An API to contribute directly from the app would make that super awesome.

Hmm, yep. That's a problem, especially if there isn't a straightforward way to contribute missing products and corrections.

Do you know of any alternative data sources?

Edit: since writing these comments, I've learned that Product Open Data may be unmaintained[0].

[0] - https://discuss.okfn.org/t/can-we-resurrect-product-open-dat...

Yep it's unmai rained and I couldn't find any good alternatives. Which is why I put the whole grocery tracking thing on hold. Barrier here is the lack of accessible data for me

That's a shame. Let's hope better alternatives exist and/or develop :)

I did try Open Food Facts[0] which correctly identified the same product for me -- and allows anyone to enter missing products, a bit like Wikipedia.

User /u/homarp mentions[1] an app which can integrate Open Food Facts with Grocy.

[0] - https://world.openfoodfacts.org/

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22648741

There is also Food Data Central and Nutritionix

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