Monitoring An Element As It Enters Or Leaves the Viewport Efficiently in React

Recently, I released the react-cool-inview, it's a React hook / component API that monitors an element enters or leaves the viewport (or another element) with performant and efficient way, using Intersection Observer. It's lightweight and super flexible, which can cover all the cases that you need, like lazy-loading images and videos, infinite scroll web app, triggering animations, tracking impressions, and more. Try it you will 👍🏻 it!

⚡️ Try yourself: https://react-cool-inview.netlify.app

Features

🚀 Monitors elements with performant and non-main-thread blocking way, using Intersection Observer.
🎣 Easy to use, based on React hook / component.
🎛 Super flexible API design which can cover all the cases that you need.
🖱 Supports scroll direction, cool right?️
✌🏻 Supports Intersection Observer v2.
📜 Supports TypeScript type definition.
🗄️ Server-side rendering compatibility.
🦔 Tiny size (~ 1.2kB gzipped). No external dependencies, aside for the react.

Usage

react-cool-inview has a flexible API design, it can cover simple to complex use cases for you. Here are some ideas for how you can use it.

⚠️ Most modern browsers support Intersection Observer natively. You can also add polyfill for full browser support.

Basic Use Case

To monitor an element enters or leaves the viewport by the

inView

state and useful sugar events.

import { useInView } from "react-cool-inview";

const App = () => {
  const { observe, unobserve, inView, scrollDirection, entry } = useInView({
    threshold: 0.25, // Default is 0
    onChange: ({ inView, scrollDirection, entry, observe, unobserve }) => {
      // Triggered whenever the target meets a threshold, e.g. [0.25, 0.5, ...]

      unobserve(); // To stop observing the current target element
      observe(); // To re-start observing the current target element
    },
    onEnter: ({ scrollDirection, entry, observe, unobserve }) => {
      // Triggered when the target enters the viewport
    },
    onLeave: ({ scrollDirection, entry, observe, unobserve }) => {
      // Triggered when the target leaves the viewport
    },
    // More useful options...
  });

  return <div ref={observe}>{inView ? "Hello, I am 🤗" : "Bye, I am 😴"}</div>;
};

Using as a Component

Changes

HelloText

when it enters the viewport. The options can be passed through the props.

import { InView } from "react-cool-inview";

const HelloText = ({ inView, observe }) => (
  <div ref={observe}>{inView ? "Hello, I am 🤗" : "Bye, I am 😴"}</div>
);

const App = () => (
  <InView unobserveOnEnter>
    <HelloText />
  </InView>
);

💡 InView passes observe and other props to the HelloText.

Lazy-loading Images

It's super easy to build an image lazy-loading component with react-cool-inview to boost the performance of your web app.

import { useInView } from "react-cool-inview";

const LazyImage = ({ width, height, ...rest }) => {
  const { observe, inView } = useInView({
    // Stop observe when the target enters the viewport, so the "inView" only triggered once
    unobserveOnEnter: true,
    // For better UX, we can grow the root margin so the image will be loaded before it comes to the viewport
    rootMargin: "50px",
  });

  return (
    <div className="placeholder" style={{ width, height }} ref={observe}>
      {inView && <img {...rest} />}
    </div>
  );
};

Infinite Scroll

Infinite scroll is a popular design technique like Facebook and Twitter feed etc., new content is loaded as you scroll down a page. The basic concept as below.

import { useState } from "react";
import { useInView } from "react-cool-inview";
import axios from "axios";

const App = () => {
  const [todos, setTodos] = useState(["todo-1", "todo-2", "..."]);
  const { observe } = useInView({
    // For better UX, we can grow the root margin so the data will be loaded earlier
    rootMargin: "50px 0px",
    // When the last item comes to the viewport
    onEnter: ({ unobserve }) => {
      // Pause observe when loading data
      unobserve();
      // Load more data
      axios.get("/todos").then((res) => {
        setTodos([...todos, ...res.todos]);
      });
    },
  });

  return (
    <div>
      {todos.map((todo, idx) => (
        <div ref={idx === todos.length - 1 ? observe : null}>{todo}</div>
      ))}
    </div>
  );
};

Trigger Animations

Another great use case is to trigger CSS animations once they are visible to the users.

import { useInView } from "react-cool-inview";

const App = () => {
  const { observe, inView } = useInView({
    // Stop observe when the target enters the viewport, so the "inView" only triggered once
    unobserveOnEnter: true,
    // Shrink the root margin, so the animation will be triggered once the target reach a fixed amount of visible
    rootMargin: "-100px 0px",
  });

  return (
    <div className="container" ref={observe}>
      <div className={inView ? "fade-in" : ""}>I'm a 🍟</div>
    </div>
  );
};

Track Impressions

react-cool-inview can also play as an impression tracker, helps you fire an analytic event when a user sees an element or advertisement.

import { useInView } from "react-cool-inview";

const App = () => {
  const { observe } = useInView({
    // For an element to be considered "seen", we'll say it must be 100% in the viewport
    threshold: 1,
    onEnter: ({ unobserve }) => {
      // Stop observe when the target enters the viewport, so the callback only triggered once
      unobserve();
      // Fire an analytic event to your tracking service
      someTrackingService.send("🍋 is seen");
    },
  });

  return <div ref={observe}>I'm a 🍋</div>;
};

Scroll Direction

react-cool-inview not only monitors an element enters or leaves the viewport but also tells you its scroll direction by the

scrollDirection

object. The object contains vertical (y-axios) and horizontal (x-axios) properties, they're calculated whenever the target element meets a

threshold

. If there's no enough condition for calculating, the value of the properties will be

undefined

. In addition, the value of the properties will sync with the scrolling direction of the viewport.

import useInView from "react-cool-inview";

const App = () => {
  const {
    observe,
    inView,
    // vertical will be "up" or "down", horizontal will be "left" or "right"
    scrollDirection: { vertical, horizontal },
  } = useInView({
    // Scroll direction is calculated whenever the target meets a threshold
    // more trigger points the calculation will be more instant and accurate
    threshold: [0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1],
    onChange: ({ scrollDirection }) => {
      // We can also access the scroll direction from the event object
      console.log("Scroll direction: ", scrollDirection.vertical);
    },
  });

  return (
    <div ref={observe}>
      <div>{inView ? "Hello, I am 🤗" : "Bye, I am 😴"}</div>
      <div>{`You're scrolling ${vertical === "up" ? "⬆️" : "⬇️"}`}</div>
    </div>
  );
};

Intersection Observer v2

The Intersection Observer v1 can perfectly tell you when an element is scrolled into the viewport, but it doesn't tell you whether the element is covered by something else on the page or whether the element has any visual effects applied on it (like transform, opacity, filter etc.) that can make it invisible. The main concern that has surfaced is how this kind of knowledge could be helpful in preventing clickjacking and UI redress attacks (read this article to learn more).

If you want to track the click-through rate (CTR) or impression of an element, which is actually visible to a user, Intersection Observer v2 can be the savior. Which introduces a new boolean field named isVisible. A

true

value guarantees that an element is visible on the page and has no visual effects applied to it. A

false

value is just the opposite. The characteristic of the

isVisible

is integrated with the

inView

state and related events (like onEnter, onLeave etc.) to provide a better DX for you.

When using the v2, there're somethings we need to know:

Check browser compatibility. If a browser doesn't support the v2, we will fallback to the v1 behavior. Understand how visibility is calculated.Visibility is much more expensive to compute than intersection, only use it when needed.

To use Intersection Observer v2, we must set the

trackVisibility

and

delay

options.

import { useInView } from "react-cool-inview";

const App = () => {
  // With Intersection Observer v2, the "inView" not only tells you the target
  // is intersecting with the root, but also guarantees it's visible on the page
  const { observe, inView } = useInView({
    // Track the actual visibility of the target
    trackVisibility: true,
    // Set a minimum delay between notifications, it must be set to 100 (ms) or greater
    // For performance perspective, use the largest tolerable value as much as possible
    delay: 100,
    onEnter: () => {
      // Triggered when the target is visible and enters the viewport
    },
    onLeave: () => {
      // Triggered when the target is visible and leaves the viewport
    },
  });

  return <div ref={observe}>{inView ? "Hello, I am 🤗" : "Bye, I am 😴"}</div>;
};

Thanks for reading, for more usage details check out the project's GitHub page: https://github.com/wellyshen/react-cool-inview

You can also install this package is distributed via npm.

$ yarn add react-cool-inview
# or
$ npm install --save react-cool-inview