xkcd search

This is a demo that showcases some of Typesense's features using xkcd comics and metadata from explain xkcd.

View it live here: https://findxkcd.com/

Tech Stack

This search experience is powered by Typesense which is a fast, open source typo-tolerant search-engine. It is an open source alternative to Algolia and an easier-to-use alternative to ElasticSearch.

The app was built using the Typesense Adapter for InstantSearch.js and is hosted on Cloudflare Pages.

The search/browsing backend is powered by a geo-distributed 3-node Typesense cluster running on Typesense Cloud, with nodes in Oregon, Frankfurt and Mumbai.

Repo structure

• src/ and index.html - contain the frontend UI components, built with Typesense Adapter for InstantSearch.js
• scripts/ - contains the scripts to extract, transform and index the data into Typesense.

Development

1. Create a .env file using .env.example as reference.

2. Fetch Data

mkdir -p data/raw
yarn fetchData

3. Transform and index the data

yarn transformData
yarn indexData

4. Install dependencies and run the local server:

yarn
yarn start

Open http://localhost:3000 to see the app.

Deployment

The app is hosted on Cloudflare Pages and is set to auto-deploy on git push