Flight Finder is a fully custom WordPress plugin I built from the ground up to showcase my ability to create a robust API integration, implement comprehensive error handling, and showcase responsive UI design. It connects to SerpAPI’s Google Flights engine via a secure REST request—accepting user-selected departure and destination airports and travel dates—and retrieves real-time flight options in JSON format.

Key Features:

• • Secure API Integration
    1. Uses SerpAPI’s Google Flights engine via HTTPS requests with an API key stored in plugin settings.
    2. Implements wp_remote_get() to fetch flight data server-side, avoiding CORS issues on the front end.
  • Data Transformation & Sanitization
    1. Parses the raw JSON response and maps only necessary fields (airline, price, duration, stops) into a PHP array.
    2. Escapes and sanitizes all output with esc_html() and esc_attr() to guard against XSS.
  • Responsive Front-End Rendering
    Uses a mobile-first CSS grid layout for result panels, ensuring optimal UI/UX on phones and tablets.
  • Custom Flight Card Styling
    100% custom CSS was written to style the flight info cards.  Doing so turned the raw JSON data into visually appealing eye candy that’s easy to understand.
  • Admin Settings Page
    Provides a settings screen under Settings → Flight Finder to enter and test the SerpAPI key upon plugin activation.
  • Shortcode-Based Architecture
    1. [flight_search_form] – For the interactive search form.
    2. [flight_search_results] – for rendering returned flight options.

    Finally, I packaged everything into a single, installable plugin so that any WordPress site can drop in a fully functional Flight Finder search tool without additional theme edits.