React Virtualization is a technique used to efficiently render large lists or grids of data in React applications by only rendering the visible items on the screen and a small buffer, rather than rendering the entire list. This significantly improves the performance of applications that handle large datasets by minimizing the number of DOM elements being rendered at a time.
Why Use React Virtualization?
When rendering large amounts of data (such as thousands of rows in a table or list), displaying all the data at once can be very inefficient. Rendering every item in the DOM can cause:
- Slow rendering times due to the high number of DOM elements.
- Excessive memory usage as each DOM node consumes resources.
- Laggy user experience when users scroll through the page, due to the heavy DOM manipulation.
Key principles:
- Windowing: Only the items that are currently in view (and a small buffer) are rendered in the DOM. As the user scrolls, new items are rendered into view and old items are removed.
- Dynamic Rendering: Items are dynamically added and removed from the DOM as the user scrolls, minimizing the number of DOM nodes at any one time.
- Placeholder Elements: The entire scrollable area still behaves as if all items are present, thanks to placeholder elements (often with a fixed height or width) that ensure the scrolling experience is smooth.
Libraries for React Virtualization
Several libraries can help you implement virtualization in React projects, including:
- react-window: A lightweight library designed to efficiently render large lists and grids.
- react-virtualized: A more feature-rich library with support for virtualizing lists, tables, grids, and more.
Example with react-window (Preferred One):
To Pass data as a prop from main Parent App.js:
I hope you find this content helpful. It covers a topic that many developers may not be familiar with, but it's incredibly valuable and can greatly improve performance in React applications. This is also my first post in the developer community ☺, and I'm excited to share this insight with all of you!❤😋🥰
Top comments (0)