🔍 Implement Search & Category Filtering in React with TailwindCSS (2025 Guide)

In this guide, you’ll learn how to implement powerful search and category filtering in a React application using TailwindCSS for styling. This builds on a previous project where we created a responsive recipe website.

By the end of this tutorial, you'll be able to:

* Filter recipe cards by text input

* Filter by category dropdown

* Clear search with a single click

* Ensure case-insensitive matching

✅ Prerequisites

* A React app already set up (ideally with TailwindCSS + recipe data)

* Basic understanding of React state and hooks

🧱 Step 1: Create State for Search and Category

Inside your RecipesPage.jsx (or App.jsx if everything is in one file):

const [searchQuery, setSearchQuery] = useState("");
const [category, setCategory] = useState("");
const [filteredRecipes, setFilteredRecipes] = useState(recipes);

🎨 Step 2: Create the UI

🔍 Search + Filter Inputs

⚙️ Step 3: Search Logic with useEffect

useEffect(() => {
const query = searchQuery.toLowerCase();

const result = recipes.filter(recipe =>
recipe.title.toLowerCase().includes(query) ||
recipe.ingredients.some(ing => ing.toLowerCase().includes(query)) ||
recipe.category.toLowerCase().includes(query)
);

if (category) {
setFilteredRecipes(result.filter(recipe => recipe.category === category));
} else {
setFilteredRecipes(result);
}
}, [searchQuery, category]);

This runs every time the search query or category changes.

📦 Step 4: Display Filtered Recipes

🧠 Bonus: Tips

* Use toLowerCase() to make searching case-insensitive

* Use Set to generate unique categories

* Add debounce if your search data is large

* For UX, make the clear button instantly reset filters

📈 SEO Keywords

* React search filter tutorial 2025

* Tailwind CSS form input search

* Recipe search filter React example

* Case-insensitive search with useEffect

* Responsive dropdown in React + TailwindCSS