Is an HTML element in the viewport? with React hooks

During the process of developing my blog, I decided to create a comments section based on the GitHub issues system (more about this subject, in a future blog post). To avoid unnecessary API calls and make a better UX, I decided to fetch data from the GitHub API only when the comments section is in the browser viewport.

I searched for an article or a video tutorial for creating a simple useIsInViewport custom hook that will help me solve this issue. However, most of the search results were libraries, and I did not want to add an external library for such a simple task. Therefore, I decided to build my own custom hook.

I hope this blog post will help you create your own simple but powerful useIsInViewport custom hook.

Wrap IntersectionObserver into custom hook

The simplest way to determine if an HTML element is in the browser viewport is to use the browser native API IntersectionObserver. The IntersectionObserver is a class that receives a callback as an argument into its constructor. The callback will be triggered every time one of the observed HTML elements will appear in the browser viewport. The IntersectionObserver has four methods:

1. observe - receives an HTML element as an argument and instructs the instance to observe this element.
2. unobserve - receives an HTML element as an argument and instructs the instance to stop observe this element.
3. disconnect - will instruct the instance to stop observe all HTML elements declared before.
4. takeRecords - return an array of all HTML elements the instance observes.

Let's start by wrapping the functionality of IntersectionObserver into a custom React hook (we will call it useIsInViewport):

import { useRef, useEffect, useState } from 'react'

export default function useIsInViewport() {
  const elementRef = useRef()
  const [isInViewPort, setIsInViewPort] = useState(false)

  useEffect(() => {
    const observer = new IntersectionObserver((entries) => {
      const isInViewPort = !!entries[0]?.isIntersecting

      setIsInViewPort(isInViewPort)
    })

    observer.observe(elementRef.current)

    return () => observer.disconnect()
  }, [])

  return { elementRef, isInViewPort }
}

In the example above, we created a ref and a state. The ref will be attached to the HTML element we want to track and determine whether it is inside or outside the browser viewport. According to that, the state will change.

Another important thing about this code implementation, it starts the observation process when the component mounts and stops it on unmount.

Let's see an example of how to use the useIsInViewport custom hook:

import useIsInViewport from '../hooks/use-is-in-viewport'

export default function Comments() {
  const { elementRef, isInViewPort } = useIsInViewport()

  useEffect(() => {
    if (!isInViewPort) {
      return;
    }

    // Fetch the data.
  }, [isInViewPort])

  return (
    <div ref={elementRef}>
      { /* all the comments */ }
    </div>
  )
}

Extend useInViewPort hook with count and wasInViewport

Sometimes, it is not enough to know whether an HTML element is in the browser viewport at the current time. We also need to know how many times the HTML element was in the browser viewport or if it appeared before. For example, in my case, all I needed to know was if the user scrolled to the comments HTML element. Then, the component should fetch comments data.

To achieve this goal of extending the useInViewPort hook, we will transform the simple state into an object with three properties:

1. isInViewport - returns boolean that represents whether at the current time the HTML element is in the browser viewport or not.
2. count - returns the number of times the HTML element entered the browser viewport.
3. wasInViewport - returns boolean that represents whether the HTML element was at least once in the browser viewport.

import { useRef, useEffect, useState } from 'react'

export function useIsInViewport() {
  const elementRef = useRef()
  const [{ isInViewPort, wasInViewPort, count }, setData] = useState({
    isInViewPort: false,
    wasInViewPort: false,
    count: 0
  })

  useEffect(() => {
    const observer = new IntersectionObserver((entries) => {
      const isInViewPort = !!entries[0]?.isIntersecting

      setData((prev) => {
        const count = isInViewPort ? prev.count + 1 : prev.count

        return {
          isInViewPort,
          count,
          wasInViewPort: count > 0
        }
      })
    })

    observer.observe(elementRef.current)

    return () => observer.disconnect()
  }, [])

  return {
    elementRef,
    isInViewPort,
    count,
    wasInViewPort
  }
}

Here is how we can use those new pieces of state (just changed from isInViewport to wasInViewport):

import useIsInViewport from '../hooks/use-is-in-viewport'

export default function Comments() {
  const { elementRef, wasInViewPort } = useIsInViewport()

  useEffect(() => {
    if (!wasInViewPort) {
      return;
    }

    // Fetch the data.
  }, [wasInViewPort])

  return (
    <div ref={elementRef}>
      { /* all the comments */ }
    </div>
  )
}

Take advantage of IntersectionObserver options

IntersectionObserver API has options that help solve some issues. One of those options, and the most useful one, in my opinion, is the rootMargin. The rootMargin allows us to change the state of the isInViewport to true, a few pixels (or rem, em, etc.) before the HTML element enters the browser viewport. To take advantage of the rootMargin option, we need to pass it as an object property to the IntersectionObserver instance.

import { useRef, useEffect, useState } from 'react'

export function useIsInViewport(options) {
  // ...

  useEffect(() => {
    const observer = new IntersectionObserver((entries) => {
      // ...
    }, options)

    // ...
  }, [])

  // ...
}

Here is how it looks like in the component, using the isInViewport custom hook:

import useIsInViewport from '../hooks/use-is-in-viewport'

export default function Comments() {
  const { elementRef, wasInViewPort } = useIsInViewport({
    rootMargin: '500px',
  })

  // ...
}

To know more about the IntersectionObserver API options, check out this guide.

Conclusion

Sometimes a simple custom hook can solve the problem of determining whether an HTML element is in the browser viewport or not. For more battle-tested code, Here are some libraries to check out:

• React Visibility Sensor
• React on screen
• React in Viewport

You should also check the IntersectionObserver API guide by "MDN Web docs": Intersection Observer API

That's it for now!

Let me know if you like this blog post in the comments below.