West Midlands | 26 March SDC | Iswat Bello | Sprint 1 | Purple Forest/bug report/Hashtag slowing down my browser

[Iswanna]

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Changelist

This PR resolves the infinite flickering issue on hashtag pages by implementing a guard clause within the hashtagView function. This prevents a circular logic loop where state updates were triggering redundant route changes and repeated API requests.

The Problem: When visiting a hashtag page, the application became stuck in an infinite loop. The screen would flash blank repeatedly, and the Network tab showed continuous API requests to the same endpoint.

The Discovery: I traced the logic through index.mjs, router.mjs, and hashtag.mjs.

• The Loop: The hashtagView was calling the API every time it ran. The API updated the state, which triggered a state-change event. The index.mjs listener heard this event and told the router to run again, starting the cycle over.
• The Flicker: The destroy() function was being called at the start of every loop iteration, wiping the screen before the data could be rendered.

The Fix:

• Implemented a Guard Clause in hashtagView.mjs.
• The Logic: The function now checks if the requested hashtag is already the currentHashtag in the state.
• It only clears the screen and calls the API if the user is navigating to a new hashtag.

Verification:

• Confirmed that the flickering has stopped.
• Verified in the Network tab that only one API request is made per hashtag navigation.

[nedssoft]

Great detective work, Iswat — tracing the flicker through index.mjs → router.mjs → hashtag.mjs and naming the API → state-change → re-render → API cycle is genuinely tricky, and your guard breaks it cleanly. 👏 One question purely to deepen the win (not a change): your guard compares against state.currentHashtag — what sets that value, and at what point in the cycle? Being able to point to exactly where the loop is broken is the real prize.