Get lost in Wikipedia rabbit holes with RabbitHole.
Check out my video demo by clicking on this image:
I love wasting my time down rabbit holes browsing through Wikipedia articles, and I wanted to build a nice UI to accompany that process!
RabbitHole populates cards with information and descriptions about related Wikipedia articles. A user can click on any of these cards, and the app will open up the Wikipedia article about that card. You can also search for a topic if you're interested in something specific. I also wrote up a Bookmarklet feature, so that if you're already on Wikipedia, you can open up RabbitHole with cards about that page that you're already looking at.
I used React.JS components to build the application, with a backend of simple Wikipedia API calls. I used a Material UI library for formatting and templating, and wrote up the Bookmarklet feature in super easy JavaScript code.
I had a lot of trouble with the idea of React re-rendering on state changes. I would change the state of my application and expect the app to reload, but often it wouldn't, or it would complain that I had an undefined value in my state. I finally realized that state updates are asynchronous, which made developing a lot more complicated.
I went into this project with absolutely zero experience in React, and I was able to finish up a functioning application with multiple components! I also have little experience in front end in general, so I was able to brush up on concepts like statefulness and API interactions.
The most valuable thing I learned from this project was passing down information between components in React after each component individually renders. This project really showed me the beauty of React, in that only parts that get new data have to reload, making applications much more quick and enjoyable to use.
I really wanted to implement a trending feature, where I could store searches that people make on RabbitHole and show users the most popular articles being viewed right now. Also, I was planning on writing up code to let users see their "bread crumbs", and see the rabbit holes they've been down in their current session.
This project was bootstrapped with Create React App.
In the project directory, you can run:
Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.
The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.
Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.
Builds the app for production to the build folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.
The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!
See the section about deployment for more information.
Note: this is a one-way operation. Once you eject, you can’t go back!
If you aren’t satisfied with the build tool and configuration choices, you can eject at any time. This command will remove the single build dependency from your project.
Instead, it will copy all the configuration files and the transitive dependencies (webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc) right into your project so you have full control over them. All of the commands except eject will still work, but they will point to the copied scripts so you can tweak them. At this point you’re on your own.
You don’t have to ever use eject. The curated feature set is suitable for small and middle deployments, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to use this feature. However we understand that this tool wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t customize it when you are ready for it.
You can learn more in the Create React App documentation.
To learn React, check out the React documentation.
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