react-infinite-scroller

What is react-infinite-scroller?

The react-infinite-scroller package provides a simple way to implement infinite scrolling in React applications. It allows you to load more content as the user scrolls down the page, which is useful for displaying large lists of data without overwhelming the user or the browser.

What are react-infinite-scroller's main functionalities?

Basic Infinite Scrolling

This code demonstrates a basic implementation of infinite scrolling using the react-infinite-scroller package. It initializes a list of items and appends more items to the list as the user scrolls down. The `loadMore` function is called to fetch more items, and the `hasMore` state determines if more items should be loaded.

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import InfiniteScroll from 'react-infinite-scroller';

class InfiniteScrollExample extends Component {
  state = {
    items: Array.from({ length: 20 }),
    hasMore: true
  };

  loadMore = () => {
    if (this.state.items.length >= 100) {
      this.setState({ hasMore: false });
      return;
    }
    setTimeout(() => {
      this.setState({
        items: this.state.items.concat(Array.from({ length: 20 }))
      });
    }, 1500);
  };

  render() {
    return (
      <InfiniteScroll
        pageStart={0}
        loadMore={this.loadMore}
        hasMore={this.state.hasMore}
        loader={<div className="loader" key={0}>Loading ...</div>}
      >
        {this.state.items.map((_, index) => (
          <div key={index} style={{ height: 50, border: '1px solid black' }}>
            Item {index + 1}
          </div>
        ))}
      </InfiniteScroll>
    );
  }
}

export default InfiniteScrollExample;

Other packages similar to react-infinite-scroller

react-virtualized

react-virtualized is a library for efficiently rendering large lists and tabular data. It provides a set of components for windowing, which means only rendering the visible items in a list to improve performance. Unlike react-infinite-scroller, react-virtualized focuses on performance optimization for large datasets by virtualizing the DOM.

react-window

react-window is a lightweight alternative to react-virtualized for rendering large lists and tabular data. It offers similar functionality with a smaller footprint and simpler API. Like react-virtualized, it focuses on performance by only rendering visible items, but it is more lightweight and easier to use.

react-infinite

react-infinite is another library for implementing infinite scrolling in React applications. It provides a simple API for loading more content as the user scrolls. While similar to react-infinite-scroller, react-infinite offers more customization options for handling infinite scrolling behavior.

README

React Infinite Scroller

Infinitely load a grid or list of items in React. This component allows you to create a simple, lightweight infinite scrolling page or element by supporting both window and scrollable elements.

• ⏬ Ability to use window or a scrollable element
• 📏 No need to specify item heights
• 💬 Support for "chat history" (reverse) mode
• ✅ Fully unit tested and used in hundreds of production sites around the world!
• 📦 Lightweight alternative to other available React scroll libs ~ 2.2KB minified & gzipped

---

• Demo
• Demo Source

Installation

npm install react-infinite-scroller --save

yarn add react-infinite-scroller

How to use

import InfiniteScroll from 'react-infinite-scroller';

Window scroll events

<InfiniteScroll
    pageStart={0}
    loadMore={loadFunc}
    hasMore={true || false}
    loader={<div className="loader" key={0}>Loading ...</div>}
>
    {items} // <-- This is the content you want to load
</InfiniteScroll>

DOM scroll events

<div style="height:700px;overflow:auto;">
    <InfiniteScroll
        pageStart={0}
        loadMore={loadFunc}
        hasMore={true || false}
        loader={<div className="loader" key={0}>Loading ...</div>}
        useWindow={false}
    >
        {items}
    </InfiniteScroll>
</div>

Custom parent element

You can define a custom parentNode element to base the scroll calulations on.

<div style="height:700px;overflow:auto;" ref={(ref) => this.scrollParentRef = ref}>
    <div>
        <InfiniteScroll
            pageStart={0}
            loadMore={loadFunc}
            hasMore={true || false}
            loader={<div className="loader" key={0}>Loading ...</div>}
            useWindow={false}
            getScrollParent={() => this.scrollParentRef}
        >
            {items}
        </InfiniteScroll>
    </div>
</div>

Props

Name	Required	Type	Default	Description
children	Yes	Node		Anything that can be rendered (same as PropType's Node)
loadMore	Yes	Function		A callback when more items are requested by the user. Receives a single parameter specifying the page to load e.g. function handleLoadMore(page) { /* load more items here */ } }
element		Component	'div'	Name of the element that the component should render as.
hasMore		Boolean	false	Whether there are more items to be loaded. Event listeners are removed if false.
initialLoad		Boolean	true	Whether the component should load the first set of items.
isReverse		Boolean	false	Whether new items should be loaded when user scrolls to the top of the scrollable area.
loader		Component		A React component to render while more items are loading. The parent component must have a unique key prop.
pageStart		Number	0	The number of the first page to load, With the default of 0, the first page is 1.
getScrollParent		Function		Override method to return a different scroll listener if it's not the immediate parent of InfiniteScroll.
threshold		Number	250	The distance in pixels before the end of the items that will trigger a call to loadMore.
useCapture		Boolean	false	Proxy to the useCapture option of the added event listeners.
useWindow		Boolean	true	Add scroll listeners to the window, or else, the component's parentNode.

Troubleshooting

Double or non-stop calls to loadMore

If you experience double or non-stop calls to your loadMore callback, make sure you have your CSS layout working properly before adding this component in. Calculations are made based on the height of the container (the element the component creates to wrap the items), so the height of the container must equal the entire height of the items.

.my-container {
  overflow: auto;
}

Some people have found success using react-infinite-scroll-component.

But you should just add an isLoading prop!

This component doesn't make any assumptions about what you do in terms of API calls. It's up to you to store whether you are currently loading items from an API in your state/reducers so that you don't make overlapping API calls.

loadMore() {
  if(!this.state.isLoading) {
    this.props.fetchItems();
  }
}