Import On Visibility

Besides user interaction, we often have components that aren’t visible on the initial page. A good example of this is lazy loading images that aren’t directly visible in the viewport, but only get loaded once the user scrolls down.

As we’re not requesting all images instantly, we can reduce the initial loading time. We can do the same with components! In order to know whether components are currently in our viewport, we can use the IntersectionObserver API, or use libraries such as react-lazyload or react-loadable-visibility to quickly add import on visibility to our application.

1import React from "react";
2import Send from "./icons/Send";
3import Emoji from "./icons/Emoji";
4import LoadableVisibility from "react-loadable-visibility/react-loadable";
5
6const EmojiPicker = LoadableVisibility({
7  loader: () => import("./EmojiPicker"),
8  loading: <p id="loading">Loading</p>
9});
10
11const ChatInput = () => {
12  const [pickerOpen, togglePicker] = React.useReducer(state => !state, false);
13
14  return (
15    <div className="chat-input-container">
16      <input type="text" placeholder="Type a message..." />
17      <Emoji onClick={togglePicker} />
18      {pickerOpen && <EmojiPicker />}
19      <Send />
20    </div>
21  );
22};
23
24console.log("ChatInput loading", Date.now());
25
26export default ChatInput;

Whenever the EmojiPicker is rendered to the screen, after the user clicks on the Gif button, react-loadable-visibility detects that the EmojiPicker element should be visible on the screen. Only then, it will start importing the module while the user sees a loading component being rendered.

This fallback component to let the user know that our application hasn’t frozen: they simply need to wait a short while for the module to be loaded, parsed, compiled, and executed!