In this episode, we tackle a pretty common problem in search functionality—making sure your app doesn't send a backend request every single time you type a letter. That can get crazy really fast! To fix this, we dive into debouncing, which basically just means we make our search wait a moment before actually firing off a request, giving users a chance to finish typing.
We start by refactoring our code, moving the search logic into a dedicated handler function that we'll later debounce. Then, we pull in Lodash's handy debounce
function and wrap our search handler, playing around with debounce timings. At first, we try a full second—just to see how it feels—then drop it to a more natural 500ms delay. With this setup, typing triggers just one request after the user pauses, instead of a flood of network calls with every keystroke.
We test things out, watch the network tab, and confirm everything still works, but with far fewer requests and no real loss in responsiveness. Debugging a typo shows an extra request or two when correcting, but that's still way better than before. In the end, our search feels smooth, and our backend breathes a whole lot easier!