tl;dr Check out this cool app I built!

I recently visited my hometown of Louisville, KY, where the coffee flows like wild horses. I had some down time and thought it would be cool to dive deep into React. I heard the React core team built their cool new docs page using Gatsby so I forked Gatsby’s blogging template and set to work.

While in Louisville I used my Frontend Master subscription to listen to Brian Holt’s introduction course on Reactjs. I had previously built a react app at zTailors and had learned a lot, but was glad to learn some tips and also to catch up on what’s current in the react toolkit. Brian does a great job and I used the opportunity to build a Calvin and Hobbes Search.

Some of the technologies I used:

• React
• airbnb react dates - for slick date picking.
• Flow - a static type checker for javascript.
• Semantic UI - a UI library for quick bootstrapping.
• Jest
• ESLint Javascript linter, specifically Airbnb’s config.
• Scrapy - Python scraper for populating the massive json config from Go Comics so that the images can be cross domain hosted.

I named the app after the esteemable Spaceman Spiff.

Code: https://github.com/darrenjennings/spaceman-spiffy

Spaceman Spiff is the most prominent of Calvin’s many alter egos. He is a space explorer who often does battle with aliens, either on foot or in space.