recyclerlistview

What is recyclerlistview?

RecyclerListView is a high-performance list view for React Native and web that leverages the concept of recycling cells to improve performance, especially for large data sets. It is designed to handle complex layouts and large data efficiently.

What are recyclerlistview's main functionalities?

High-Performance Scrolling

This feature allows for smooth and high-performance scrolling of large lists by recycling views that are no longer visible. The code sample demonstrates how to set up a basic RecyclerListView with a simple row renderer.

import { RecyclerListView, DataProvider, LayoutProvider } from 'recyclerlistview';

const dataProvider = new DataProvider((r1, r2) => r1 !== r2).cloneWithRows(yourDataArray);
const layoutProvider = new LayoutProvider(
  index => 0,
  (type, dim) => {
    dim.width = Dimensions.get('window').width;
    dim.height = 100;
  }
);

const rowRenderer = (type, data) => (
  <View style={{ height: 100 }}>
    <Text>{data}</Text>
  </View>
);

<RecyclerListView
  layoutProvider={layoutProvider}
  dataProvider={dataProvider}
  rowRenderer={rowRenderer}
/>;

Complex Layouts

RecyclerListView supports complex layouts by allowing different item types and sizes. The code sample shows how to define a layout provider and row renderer for different item types.

const layoutProvider = new LayoutProvider(
  index => yourDataArray[index].type,
  (type, dim) => {
    switch (type) {
      case 'type1':
        dim.width = Dimensions.get('window').width;
        dim.height = 200;
        break;
      case 'type2':
        dim.width = Dimensions.get('window').width;
        dim.height = 100;
        break;
      default:
        dim.width = 0;
        dim.height = 0;
    }
  }
);

const rowRenderer = (type, data) => {
  switch (type) {
    case 'type1':
      return <View style={{ height: 200 }}><Text>{data}</Text></View>;
    case 'type2':
      return <View style={{ height: 100 }}><Text>{data}</Text></View>;
    default:
      return null;
  }
};

<RecyclerListView
  layoutProvider={layoutProvider}
  dataProvider={dataProvider}
  rowRenderer={rowRenderer}
/>;

Dynamic Data Handling

RecyclerListView can handle dynamic data changes efficiently. The code sample demonstrates how to add new items to the list dynamically and update the data provider.

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.state = {
      dataProvider: new DataProvider((r1, r2) => r1 !== r2).cloneWithRows(initialData)
    };
  }

  addItem = newItem => {
    const newData = [...this.state.dataProvider.getAllData(), newItem];
    this.setState({
      dataProvider: this.state.dataProvider.cloneWithRows(newData)
    });
  };

  render() {
    return (
      <RecyclerListView
        layoutProvider={layoutProvider}
        dataProvider={this.state.dataProvider}
        rowRenderer={rowRenderer}
      />
    );
  }
}

Other packages similar to recyclerlistview

flatlist

FlatList is a built-in component in React Native for rendering lists. It is simpler to use but may not offer the same level of performance optimization for very large datasets as RecyclerListView. FlatList is suitable for most use cases where the list size is moderate.

react-window

react-window is a library for efficiently rendering large lists and tabular data in React. It is similar to RecyclerListView in terms of performance optimization but is designed for web applications rather than React Native. It offers a simple API and is highly customizable.

README

RecyclerListView

If this project has helped you out, please support us with a star :star2:.

This is a high performance listview for React Native and Web with support for complex layouts. JS only with no native dependencies, inspired by both RecyclerView on Android and UICollectionView on iOS.

npm install --save recyclerlistview

For latest beta:
npm install --save recyclerlistview@beta

• Overview and features
• Why?
• Demo
• Props
• Typescript
• Guides
• License
• Contact us

Note: Documentation will be upgraded soon, for now check code comments for clarity and exploring features. This component is actively tested with React Native Web as well.

Overview and features

RecyclerListView uses "cell recycling" to reuse views that are no longer visible to render items instead of creating new view objects. Creation of objects is very expensive and comes with a memory overhead which means as you scroll through the list the memory footprint keeps going up. Releasing invisible items off memory is another technique but that leads to creation of even more objects and lot of garbage collections. Recycling is the best way to render infinite lists that does not compromise performance or memory efficiency.

Apart from all performance benefits RecyclerListView comes with great features out of the box:

• Cross Platform, works on Web
• Supports staggered grid layouts
• Supports variable height items even if dimensions cannot be predetermined (prop - forceNonDeterministicRendering)
• Instant layout switching like going from GridView to ListView and vice versa
• End reach detections
• Horizontal Mode
• Viewability Events
• Initial render offset/index support
• Footer support
• Reflow support on container size change with first visible item preservation
• Scroll position preservation
• Window scrolling support for web
• (New) ItemAnimator interface added, customize to your will how RLV handles layout changes. Allows you to modify animations that move cells. You can do things like smoothly move an item to a new position when height of one of the cells has changed.
• (New) Stable Id support, ability to associate a stable id with an item. Will enable beautiful add/remove animations and optimize re-renders when DataProvider is updated.
• (New) Sticky recycler items that stick to either the top or bottom.

Why?

RecyclerListView was built with performance in mind which means no blanks while quick scrolls or frame drops. RecyclerListView encourages you to have deterministic heights for items you need to render. This does not mean that you need to have all items of same height and stuff, all you need is a way to look at the data and compute height upfront so that RecyclerListView can compute layout in one pass rather than waiting for the draw to happen. You can still do all sorts of GridViews and ListViews with different types of items which are all recycled in optimal ways. Type based recycling is very easy to do and comes out of the box.

In case you cannot determine heights of items in advance just set forceNonDeterministicRendering prop to true on RecyclerListView. Now, it will treat given dimensions as estimates and let items resize. Try to give good estimates to improve experience.

Demo

Production Flipkart Grocery Demo Video (or try the app): https://youtu.be/6YqEqP3MmoU
Infinite Loading/View Change (Expo): https://snack.expo.io/@naqvitalha/rlv-demo
Mixed ViewTypes: https://snack.expo.io/B1GYad52b
extendedState,stableIDs and ItemAnimator (Expo): https://snack.expo.io/@arunreddy10/19bb8e
Sample project: https://github.com/naqvitalha/travelMate
Web Sample (Using RNW): https://codesandbox.io/s/k54j2zx977, https://jolly-engelbart-8ff0d0.netlify.com/
Context Preservation Sample: https://github.com/naqvitalha/recyclerlistview-context-preservation-demo

Other Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnv4HMmPgMc

Props

Prop	Required	Params Type	Description
layoutProvider	Yes	BaseLayoutProvider	Constructor function that defines the layout (height / width) of each element
dataProvider	Yes	DataProvider	Constructor function the defines the data for each element
contextProvider	No	ContextProvider	Used to maintain scroll position in case view gets destroyed, which often happens with back navigation
rowRenderer	Yes	(type: string | number, data: any, index: number) => JSX.Element | JSX.Element[] | null	Method that returns react component to be rendered. You get the type, data, index and extendedState of the view in the callback
initialOffset	No	number	Initial offset you want to start rendering from; This is very useful if you want to maintain scroll context across pages.
renderAheadOffset	No	number	specify how many pixels in advance you want views to be rendered. Increasing this value can help reduce blanks (if any). However, keeping this as low as possible should be the intent. Higher values also increase re-render compute
isHorizontal	No	boolean	If true, the list will operate horizontally rather than vertically
onScroll	No	rawEvent: ScrollEvent, offsetX: number, offsetY: number) => void	On scroll callback function that executes as a user scrolls
onRecreate	No	(params: OnRecreateParams) => void	callback function that gets executed when recreating the recycler view from context provider
externalScrollView	No	{ new (props: ScrollViewDefaultProps): BaseScrollView }	Use this to pass your on implementation of BaseScrollView
onEndReached	No	() => void	Callback function executed when the end of the view is hit (minus onEndThreshold if defined)
onEndReachedThreshold	No	number	Specify how many pixels in advance for the onEndReached callback
onEndReachedThresholdRelative	No	number	Specify how far from the end (in units of visible length of the list) the bottom edge of the list must be from the end of the content to trigger the onEndReached callback
onVisibleIndicesChanged	No	TOnItemStatusChanged	Provides visible index; helpful in sending impression events
onVisibleIndexesChanged	No	TOnItemStatusChanged	(Deprecated in 2.0 beta) Provides visible index; helpful in sending impression events
renderFooter	No	() => JSX.Element | JSX.Element[] | null	Provide this method if you want to render a footer. Helpful in showing a loader while doing incremental loads
initialRenderIndex	No	number	Specify the initial item index you want rendering to start from. Preferred over initialOffset if both specified
scrollThrottle	No	number	iOS only; Scroll throttle duration
canChangeSize	No	boolean	Specify if size can change
distanceFromWindow	No	number	(Depricated) Use applyWindowCorrection() API with windowShift. Usage?
applyWindowCorrection	No	(offset: number, windowCorrection: WindowCorrection) => void	(Enhancement/replacement to distanceFromWindow API) Allows updation of the visible windowBounds to based on correctional values passed. User can specify windowShift; in case entire RecyclerListWindow needs to shift down/up, startCorrection; in case when top window bound needs to be shifted for e.x. top window bound to be shifted down is a content overlapping the top edge of RecyclerListView, endCorrection: to alter bottom window bound for a similar use-case. Usage?
useWindowScroll	No	boolean	Web only; Layout Elements in window instead of a scrollable div
disableRecycling	No	boolean	Turns off recycling
forceNonDeterministicRendering	No	boolean	Default is false; if enabled dimensions provided in layout provider will not be strictly enforced. Use this if item dimensions cannot be accurately determined
extendedState	No	object	In some cases the data passed at row level may not contain all the info that the item depends upon, you can keep all other info outside and pass it down via this prop. Changing this object will cause everything to re-render. Make sure you don't change it often to ensure performance. Re-renders are heavy.
itemAnimator	No	ItemAnimator	Enables animating RecyclerListView item cells (shift, add, remove, etc)
style	No	object	To pass down style to inner ScrollView
scrollViewProps	No	object	For all props that need to be proxied to inner/external scrollview. Put them in an object and they'll be spread and passed down.
layoutSize	No	Dimension	Will prevent the initial empty render required to compute the size of the listview and use these dimensions to render list items in the first render itself. This is useful for cases such as server side rendering. The prop canChangeSize has to be set to true if the size can be changed after rendering. Note that this is not the scroll view size and is used solely for layouting.
onItemLayout	No	number	A callback function that is executed when an item of the recyclerListView (at an index) has been layout. This can also be used as a proxy to itemsRendered kind of callbacks.
windowCorrectionConfig	No	object	Used to specify is window correction config and whether it should be applied to some scroll events

For full feature set have a look at prop definitions of RecyclerListView (bottom of the file). All ScrollView features like RefreshControl also work out of the box.

applyWindowCorrection usage

applyWindowCorrection is used to alter the visible window bounds of the RecyclerListView dynamically. The windowCorrection of RecyclerListView along with the current scroll offset are exposed to the user. The windowCorrection object consists of 3 numeric values:

• windowShift - Direct replacement of distanceFromWindow parameter. Window shift is the offset value by which the RecyclerListView as a whole is displaced within the StickyContainer, use this param to specify how far away the first list item is from window top. This value corrects the scroll offsets for StickyObjects as well as RecyclerListView.
• startCorrection - startCorrection is used to specify the shift in the top visible window bound, with which user can receive the correct Sticky header instance even when an external factor like CoordinatorLayout toolbar.
• endCorrection - endCorrection is used to specify the shift in the bottom visible window bound, with which user can receive correct Sticky Footer instance when an external factor like bottom app bar is changing the visible view bound.

As seen in the example below

Typescript

Typescript works out of the box. The only execption is with the inherited Scrollview props. In order for Typescript to work with inherited Scrollview props, you must place said inherited Scrollview props within the scrollViewProps prop.

<RecyclerListView
  rowRenderer={this.rowRenderer}
  dataProvider={queue}
  layoutProvider={this.layoutProvider}
  onScroll={this.checkRefetch}
  renderFooter={this.renderFooter}
  scrollViewProps={{
    refreshControl: (
      <RefreshControl
        refreshing={loading}
        onRefresh={async () => {
          this.setState({ loading: true });
          analytics.logEvent('Event_Stagg_pull_to_refresh');
          await refetchQueue();
          this.setState({ loading: false });
        }}
      />
    )
  }}
/>

Guides

• Sample Code
• Performance
• Sticky Guide
• Web Support: Works with React Native Web out of the box. For use with ReactJS start importing from recyclerlistview/web e.g., import { RecyclerListView } from "recyclerlistview/web". Use aliases if you want to preserve import path. Only platform specific code is part of the build so, no unnecessary code will ship with your app.
• Polyfills Needed: requestAnimationFrame, ResizeObserver

License

Apache v2.0

Contact Us

Please open issues for any bugs that you encounter. You can reach out to me on twitter @naqvitalha or, write to [e-mail] for any questions that you might have.