Mastering Infinite Loading in React: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a Hook for Infinite Scroll

Our Hook will manage the items visible on the page, including products, blog posts, and list items. We’ll use React Router as a dependency, assuming it’s prevalent across most React applications.

function loadNextPage(pageNumber) {
  // Return an array of items corresponding to the page number
  return [];
}

Loading Data in Two Directions

What if a user visits a URL with a page number directly? We need to provide a way to load previous pages, which can be done using a “Load Previous” button. We’ll refactor our Hook to track the lowest page loaded and the highest page loaded, ensuring that we don’t load duplicate pages.

function useInfiniteLoading() {
  const [lowestPageLoaded, setLowestPageLoaded] = useState(1);
  const [highestPageLoaded, setHighestPageLoaded] = useState(1);
  
  //...
}

Perceived Performance

Perceived performance is the notion of how fast an application feels. We can make our infinite loading Hook feel instant by pre-fetching the next page of items even before the user requests them. This technique works exceptionally well with manually triggered “Load More” buttons.

function useInfiniteLoading() {
  //...
  const prefetchNextPage = async () => {
    // Prefetch the next page of items
  };
  
  //...
}

Automatic Infinite Loading

The most performant way to implement infinite loading is to use the Intersection Observer API. We’ll use an existing React Hook, react-cool-inview, to detect when the “Load More” button is in the viewport and automatically trigger the action.

import { useInView } from 'eact-cool-inview';

function useInfiniteLoading() {
  const { observe, unobserve } = useInView({
    onChange: ({ inView }) => {
      if (inView) {
        // Automatically trigger the load next page action
      }
    },
  });
  
  //...
}

Infinite Loading Options

We’ll expand our infinite loading Hook with three options: manual loading, partial infinite loading, and infinite infinite loading. Manual loading requires the user to click a “Load More” button, while infinite infinite loading automatically loads pages as the user scrolls. Partial infinite loading is a mix of both, stopping automatic loading after a predefined maximum.

• Manual Loading: Requires the user to click a “Load More” button.
• Partial Infinite Loading: Automatically loads pages until a predefined maximum.
• Infinite Infinite Loading: Automatically loads pages as the user scrolls.

function useInfiniteLoading(options) {
  //...
  switch (options.type) {
    case 'anual':
      // Manual loading implementation
      break;
    case 'partial':
      // Partial infinite loading implementation
      break;
    case 'infinite':
      // Infinite infinite loading implementation
      break;
    default:
      throw new Error('Invalid infinite loading option');
  }
  
  //...
}