How to Implement Infinite Scrolling with React.js

Introduction

Any application, whether it’s a web, desktop, or mobile app, has tons of records in terms of data. A user may want to access this data in one place for any number of reasons related to the product, items, flights, trains, homes, and so on.

For such functionality, it is difficult to load all records at once due to overall performance issues, so we need an alternative. One alternative is called an infinite scroll.

What is Infinite Scroll?

Infinite scroll is a mechanism that shows data based on an endless scroll event and loads data only as needed to avoid critical performance issues.

Basically, the infinite scroll method is pretty handy compared to pagination, where a user must click on the page number every time they want to load the next page’s data.

The infinite scrolling mechanism is only advisable when we want to continuously load data that belongs to the same level of the hierarchy. Otherwise, we can opt for other alternatives.

The infinite scrolling feature may seem like an elegant replacement for pagination. However, it is not the answer for all websites. Infinite scrolling is probably not for you if site visitors want to achieve specific types of goal-oriented activities, such as when they need to backtrack or find specific information quickly without struggling too much.

In this guide, we will implement an infinite scroll using custom logic. Let’s jump into an example.