react-motion

What is react-motion?

react-motion is a popular library for creating animations in React applications. It leverages the physics-based animation approach to create smooth and natural transitions. The library is highly flexible and allows developers to animate various properties of their components with ease.

What are react-motion's main functionalities?

Basic Animation

This example demonstrates a basic animation where a div element moves horizontally from 0 to 100 pixels using the spring function.

```jsx
import React from 'react';
import { Motion, spring } from 'react-motion';

const BasicAnimation = () => (
  <Motion defaultStyle={{ x: 0 }} style={{ x: spring(100) }}>
    {style => <div style={{ transform: `translateX(${style.x}px)` }}>Hello World</div>}
  </Motion>
);

export default BasicAnimation;
```

Staggered Motion

This example shows how to create a staggered animation where multiple items move one after another, creating a cascading effect.

```jsx
import React from 'react';
import { StaggeredMotion, spring } from 'react-motion';

const StaggeredAnimation = () => (
  <StaggeredMotion
    defaultStyles={[{ x: 0 }, { x: 0 }, { x: 0 }]}
    styles={prevInterpolatedStyles => prevInterpolatedStyles.map((_, i) => {
      return i === 0
        ? { x: spring(100) }
        : { x: spring(prevInterpolatedStyles[i - 1].x) };
    })}
  >
    {interpolatingStyles => (
      <div>
        {interpolatingStyles.map((style, i) => (
          <div key={i} style={{ transform: `translateX(${style.x}px)` }}>Item {i}</div>
        ))}
      </div>
    )}
  </StaggeredMotion>
);

export default StaggeredAnimation;
```

Transition Motion

This example demonstrates how to use TransitionMotion to animate the addition and removal of items in a list, with smooth transitions for entering and leaving elements.

```jsx
import React from 'react';
import { TransitionMotion, spring } from 'react-motion';

class TransitionAnimation extends React.Component {
  state = { items: ['a', 'b', 'c'] };

  willEnter() {
    return { opacity: 0 };
  }

  willLeave() {
    return { opacity: spring(0) };
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <TransitionMotion
        styles={this.state.items.map(item => ({ key: item, style: { opacity: spring(1) } }))}
        willEnter={this.willEnter}
        willLeave={this.willLeave}
      >
        {interpolatedStyles => (
          <div>
            {interpolatedStyles.map(config => (
              <div key={config.key} style={{ opacity: config.style.opacity }}>{config.key}</div>
            ))}
          </div>
        )}
      </TransitionMotion>
    );
  }
}

export default TransitionAnimation;
```

Other packages similar to react-motion

react-spring

react-spring is a spring-physics based animation library that is highly flexible and performant. It provides a more modern API compared to react-motion and supports hooks, making it a popular choice for new React projects.

framer-motion

framer-motion is a powerful animation library that offers a simple and declarative API for creating animations. It supports keyframes, spring animations, and gestures, and is known for its ease of use and rich feature set.

react-transition-group

react-transition-group is a low-level animation library that provides more control over the animation lifecycle. It is often used for more complex animations where developers need fine-grained control over the transition states.

README

React-Motion

import {Motion, spring} from 'react-motion';
// In your render...
<Motion defaultStyle={{x: 0}} style={{x: spring(10)}}>
  {value => <div>{value.x}</div>}
</Motion>

Animate a counter from 0 to 10. For more advanced usage, see below.

Install

Npm: npm install react-motion

Bower: bower install react-motion

1998 Script Tag: <script src="path/to/react-motion/build/react-motion.js"></script> (Module exposed as ReactMotion)

Or build it yourself from the repo: git clone https://github.com/chenglou/react-motion.git && cd react-motion && npm install && npm run prerelease

For React-native, instead of require('react-motion'), do require('react-motion/native').

(P.S. Don't forget to compile for production when you test your animation's performance!)

Demos

• Simple Transition
• Chat Heads
• Draggable Balls
• TodoMVC List Transition
• Photo Gallery
• Spring Parameters Chooser
• Water Ripples
• Draggable List

What does this library try to solve?

My React-Europe talk

For 95% of use-cases of animating components, we don't have to resort to using hard-coded easing curves and duration. Set up a stiffness and damping for your UI element, and let the magic of physics take care of the rest. This way, you don't have to worry about petty situations such as interrupted animation behavior. It also greatly simplifies the API.

This library also provides an alternative, more powerful API for React's TransitionGroup.

API

The library exports Motion, StaggeredMotion, TransitionMotion, presets, spring and utils.

spring: number -> ?[stiffness, damping] -> ConfigurationObject

(Note: not the Spring component in version <0.3.0.) The pervasive helper used to specify the how to animate to the destination value, e.g. spring(10, [120, 17]) returns an opaque configuration that describes "an animation to the value 10, with a physics spring's stiffness of 120 and damping of 17". spring(10) without the spring configuration array defaults to [170, 26]. See below for more usage and see here for a list of convenient configurations the library exports.

<Motion />

Props:

defaultStyle: ?Object

Optional. The value when the component first renders (ignored in subsequent renders). Accepts an object of arbitrary keys, mapping to initial values you want to animate, e.g. {x: 0, y: 10}.

style: Object

Required. Must have the same keys throughout component's existence. Must have the same keys as defaultStyle (if provided). Similar to defaultStyle, but asks for a spring configuration as the destination value: {x: spring(10), y: spring(20, [120, 17])}.

If a plain number is provided rather than a spring config, instead of giving an interpolated value in the children function param below, we'll jump straight to that number value.

children: Object -> ?ReactElement

Required function, which is passed an interpolated style object, e.g. {x: 5.2, y: 12.1}. Must returns a React element to render.

<Motion defaultStyle={{x: 0}} style={{x: spring(10, [120, 17])}}>
  {interpolatedStyle => <div>{interpolatedStyle.x}</div>}
</Motion>

<StaggeredMotion />

When you want to animate a list of items, you can certainly create an array of Motions and animate each. However, you often want to "stagger" them, i.e. animate items in one after another with a delay. Hard-coding this duration goes against the very purpose of spring physics. Instead, here's a natural, physics-based alternative, where "the destination position of an item depends on the current position of another".

defaultStyles: ?Array<Object>

Optional. Similar to Motion's defaultStyle, except an array of styles.

styles: ?Array<Object> -> Array<Object>

Required function. Takes as argument the previous array of styles (which is undefined at first render, unless defaultStyles is provided!). Return the array of styles containing the destination values.

children: Array<Object> -> ?ReactElement

A required function. Similar to Motion's children, but accepts the array of interpolated styles instead, e.g. [{x: 5}, {x: 6.4}, {x: 8.1}]

<StaggeredMotion
  defaultStyles={[{x: 0}, {x: 10}, {x: 20}]}
  styles={prevStyles => prevStyles.map((_, i) => {
    return i === 0
      ? {x: spring(this.state.mouseX)} // first item follows mouse's x position
      : prevStyles[i - 1]; // item i follow the position of the item before it, creating a natural staggering spring
  })}>
  {interpolatedStyles =>
    <div>
      {interpolatedStyles.map((style, i) =>
        <div key={i} style={{left: style.x}} />
      )}
    </div>
  }
</StaggeredMotion>

<TransitionMotion />

The magic component that helps you to do mounting and unmounting animation. Unlike React's TransitionGroup, instead of retaining a few items in a list when they disappear, TransitionMotion diffs on the shape of its styles object prop.

The general idea

Let TransitionMotion's styles be {myKey1: {x: spring(30)}, myKey2: {x: spring(20)}}. The interpolated styles passed to the children function, after a moment, would be {myKey1: {x: 15.1}, myKey2: {x: 8.2}}.

A few renders later, you kill myKey1 and its style config, i.e. pass the new styles as {myKey2: {x: spring(20)}}. TransitionMotion detects a missing key, but retains the key in the interpolated values as {myKey1: ..., myKey2: ...}.

This is when TransitionMotion calls the prop willLeave that you provide, passing myKey2 as argument. You're asked to return a final style config (for example, {x: spring(50)}) for myKey1, representing the style values that, when interpolatedStyles.myKey1 reaches them, allows TransitionMotion to truly kill myKey1 and its style config from the interpolated styles.

In summary: styles is {k1: {x: spring(30)}, k2: {x: spring(20)}}. Next render, styles is {k2: {x: spring(20)}}. The interpolated styles passed to children aren't affected, but remember that the k2: configReturnedFromWillLeave (say, {x: spring(50)}) part doesn't exist in the actual styles anymore. Moments later, interpolated styles reach {k1: {x: 50}, k2: {x: 19.2}}; it then re-renders, kills k1 and become {k2: {x: 19.2}}. All this time, you're mapping over the interpolate styles and rendering two items, until the last render.

Similar but simpler logic for willEnter.

defaultStyles: ?Object<string, Object>

Optional. Accepts an object of the format {myKey1: styleObject, myKey2: styleObject} where each styleObject is similar to Motion's defaultStyle. The keys must be unique non-number IDs (number keys in JS object screws with keys enumeration order, which is important when you map over it in children function).

styles: Object | (?Object -> Object)

Required. Accepts an object similar to defaultStyles, but where styleObject has spring configurations: {myKey1: {x: spring(10)}, myKey2: {y: spring(20)}}. Alternatively, also accepts a function which takes a prevStyles parameter (just like StaggeredMotion; you can do staggered unmounting animation!), and returns the destination styles.

willEnter: (string, Object, Object, Object, Object) -> Object

Not a very helpful type definition... Optional. Pass a function that takes the arguments (keyFromStylesThatJustEntered, correspondingStyleOfKey, styles, currentInterpolatedStyle, currentSpeed), and that returns a style object similar to a defaultStyle.

Defaults to a function that returns correspondingStyleOfKey, in this case {x: spring(20)}.

willLeave: (string, Object, Object, Object, Object) -> Object

Optional. Pass a function that takes the arguments keyThatJustLeft, correspondingStyleOfKey, styles, currentInterpolatedStyle, currentSpeed) and that return a style object containing some spring(...) as the destination configuration.

Optional, defaults to correspondingStyleOfKey, i.e. immediately killing the key from the interpolated values.

children: Object -> ?ReactElement

A required function. Similar to Motion's children, but accepts the object of interpolated styles instead.

const Demo = React.createClass({
  getInitialState() {
    return {
      blocks: {
        a: 'I am a',
        b: 'I am b',
        c: 'I am c',
      },
    };
  },

  getStyles() {
    let configs = {};
    Object.keys(this.state.blocks).forEach(key => {
      configs[key] = {
        opacity: spring(1),
        text: this.state.blocks[key], // not interpolated
      };
    });
    return configs;
  },

  // not used here! We don't add any new item
  willEnter(key) {
    return {
      opacity: spring(0), // start at 0, gradually expand
      text: this.state.blocks[key], // this is really just carried around so
      // that interpolated values can still access the text when the key is gone
      // from actual `styles`
    };
  },

  willLeave(key, style) {
    return {
      opacity: spring(0), // make opacity reach 0, after which we can kill the key
      text: style.text,
    };
  },

  handleClick(key) {
    const {...newBlocks} = this.state.blocks;
    delete newBlocks[key];
    this.setState({blocks: newBlocks});
  },

  render() {
    return (
      <TransitionMotion
        styles={this.getStyles()}
        willEnter={this.willEnter}
        willLeave={this.willLeave}>
        {interpolatedStyles =>
          <div>
            {Object.keys(interpolatedStyles).map(key => {
              const {text, ...style} = interpolatedStyles[key];
              return (
                <div onClick={this.handleClick.bind(null, key)} style={style}>
                  {text}
                </div>
              );
            })}
          </div>
        }
      </TransitionMotion>
    );
  },
});

presets

Some tasteful, commonly used spring presets you can plug into your style like so: spring(10, presets.wobbly). See here.

utils

Since TransitionMotion dictates styles to be an object, manipulating keys could be a little more tedious than manipulating arrays. Here are the common scenarios' solutions:

• Insert item at the beginning: {newKey: myConfigForThisKey, ...oldConfigs}.
• Insert item at the end: {...oldConfigs, newKey: myConfigForThisKey}.
• Slice/splice/reverse/sort: this library exposes a utils.reorderKeys function.

Note: object keys creation order is now guaranteed by the specs, except for integer keys, which follow ascending order and should not be used with TransitionMotion. Fortunately, you can just add a letter to your key to turn them into "true" strings.

reorderKeys: (Object, Function) -> Object

utils.reorderKeys({a: 1, b: 2}, (keysArray) => ['b', 'a']) // gives {b: 2, a: 1}

Function will receive, as arguments, the array of keys in Object and should return a new array of keys (with e.g. order changed and/or keys removed). reorderKeys will then return a new object of the same shape as object, but with the keys in the order Function dictated.

FAQ

• How do I set the duration of my animation?

Hard-coded duration goes against fluid interfaces. If your animation is interrupted mid-way, you'd get a weird completion animation if you hard-coded the time. That being said, in the demo section there's a great Spring Parameters Chooser for you to have a feel of what spring is appropriate, rather than guessing a duration in the dark.

• How do I unmount the TransitionMotion container itself?

You don't. Unless you put it in another TransitionMotion...

• How do I do staggering/chained animation where items animate in one after another?

See StaggeredMotion

• My ref doesn't work in the children function.

React string refs won't work:

<Motion style={...}>{currentValue => <div ref="stuff" />}</Motion>

This is how React works. Here's the callback ref solution.