Mobile App: Week 5

by Shiva Gupta

week
gsoc
gsoc2026
mobile
react-native
week#5
Phase-1

Week Summary

As I’d flagged to my mentor last week, most of this stretch went to college, end-semester exams and mock interviews - so it was a lighter coding week by design. Even so, I worked on the in-app search for the catalogue.

Search: Search runs entirely client-side over the cached catalogue, so it’s instant and works offline (no extra network calls). Typing filters tablets by title, theme, and blurb, with a live result count and clear empty / no-results states. The input is debounced (a short pause after you stop typing) - it barely matters at the current data size, but it’s the right seam for when search grows later.

Recently Viewed: When the search box is empty, the screen shows a Recently Viewed list instead of a blank state. Opening any tablet records it (stored in MMKV, most-recent-first), so the screen always has a useful starting point.

Entry points: The search bar on the home screen now routes into the Search tab with the input auto-focused, so you can start typing straight away. The query also clears when you leave the screen, so you always come back to a clean slate.

Work Breakdown

Area What I did MR
Search Debounced client-side search over title / theme / blurb, with count + empty states !6
Recently Viewed MMKV-backed recent list shown when the query is empty !6
Entry points Home search bar -> Search tab with auto-focus; clear-on-leave !6

What’s next