Play Finder
Game themed editorial blog with live RSS feed integration, a scrollable category carousel, and an integrated Bing-powered search bar - built with React, TypeScript, and Vite.
Tech Stack
Overview
Play Finder is a game themed editorial blog. It pulls posts from both a curated local dataset and a live RSS feed, keeping content current without any server-side infrastructure. Categories are derived dynamically from the full post set so the filter options always reflect what’s actually available.
Challenges
The category list needed to stay in sync with the live feed - hardcoding values would break as RSS content changed. Solving this meant deriving unique categories from the merged post array at runtime using useMemo, so the carousel always reflects the actual content pool.
What I built
- Live RSS feed ingestion merged with local posts into a single
useMemo-memoised typed array - Dynamic category carousel built from the real post set (no hardcoded values)
- Featured post hero + filterable card grid, both reactive to category selection
- Integrated Bing-powered search bar in the header
- Full blog detail route via React Router (
/blog/:id) - Lazy-loaded cover images with per-post local image overrides and logo fallback
- Deployed as a static SPA on Netlify