Discussions

I'm experimenting with a lightweight browser-based educational quiz using FishBase data.

I've previously worked on small interaction-heavy browser projects such as Songspot, and I'm interested in applying a similarly simple view → think → answer → continue loop to species data.

For each quiz session, I would only need a relatively small number of fish records and a few fields, such as:

• scientific name
• common name
• habitat
• distribution
• family
• image or related media when available

What would be the recommended way to retrieve this efficiently through the FishBase API?

I'm particularly interested in:

1. Using fields to avoid requesting unnecessary data.
2. Selecting a small or semi-random group of species for each session.
3. Handling limit and offset efficiently.
4. Avoiding excessive API calls.
5. Whether results should be cached server-side for a small public web project.

Would it be better to query the species endpoint dynamically for each quiz session, or periodically cache a subset of FishBase records and generate quiz questions from that local dataset?

I'd also be interested in any recommended rate-limit or caching practices for this type of small educational application.

Thanks!