React/Redux rendering a list that's updating every second

Question

I have a react component that receives props from the redux store every second. The new state has an array that's different than the last array. To be specific, every second an element is added to the array. For example: in one state the array is:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

the next state

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

My reducer:

return {
  ...state,
  myList: [ payload, ...state.myList.filter(item => payload.id !== item.id).slice(0, -1) ]
}

Now, in my react component I am subscribing to this state and for every change, the list is re-rendered.

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import MyRow from './MyRow';

class MyList extends Component {

    render() {

        return (

        <div>

            {this.props.myList.map((list, index) => (
                <MyRow key={list.id} data={list}/>
            ))}

        </div>

        );
    }
}

function select({ myList }) {
    return { myList };
}

export default connect(select)(MyList);

In MyRow.js

import { PureComponent } from 'react';

class MyRow extends PureComponent {

    render() {

    const data = this.props.data;

        return (
            <div>
                {data.id} - {data.name}
            </div>
        );

    }
}
export default MyRow;

Now, my problem is: It's costly for me to re-render every element that has been already rendered. The MyRow heavily uses styled components and other expensive operations. This is causing react to re-render the whole list every second when the state is updated. This gets worst if updates come in less than 1 seconds, like 4 updates per second. The react app simply crashes in this case.

Is there any way to only add the newly added item to the list and not re-render the whole list?

Thanks

Answer 1

You're using PureComponent, that do shallow comparison, then your component MyRow should not be rerendered on each new item being added (Please follow my code example below).

Is there any way to only add the newly added item to the list and not re-render the whole list?

According to your question - Yes, using PureComponent should render only 1 time the new item:

Here's what the React's docs says:

If your React component’s render() function renders the same result given the same props and state, you can use React.PureComponent for a performance boost in some cases.

Code example of PureComponent:

You can check out the code sample, that I did for you.

You will see that the Item component is always rendered only 1 time, because we use React.PureComponent. To prove my statement, each time the Item is rendered, I added current time of rendering. From the example you will see that the Item Rendered at: time is always the same, because it's rendered only 1 time.

const itemsReducer = (state = [], action) => {
  if (action.type === 'ADD_ITEM') return [ ...state, action.payload]

  return state
}

const addItem = item => ({
  type: 'ADD_ITEM',
  payload: item
})

class Item extends React.PureComponent {
  render () {
    // As you can see here, the `Item` is always rendered only 1 time,
    // because we use `React.PureComponent`.
    // You can check that the `Item` `Rendered at:` time is always the same.
    // If we do it with `React.Component`,
    // then the `Item` will be rerendered on each List update.
    return <div>{ this.props.name }, Rendered at: { Date.now() }</div>
  }
}

class List extends React.Component {
  constructor (props) {
    super(props)
    this.state = { intervalId: null }
    this.addItem = this.addItem.bind(this)
  }

  componentDidMount () {
    // Add new item on each 1 second,
    // and keep its `id`, in order to clear the interval later
    const intervalId = setInterval(this.addItem, 1000)
    this.setState({ intervalId })
  }

  componentWillUnmount () {
    // Use intervalId from the state to clear the interval
    clearInterval(this.state.intervalId)
  }

  addItem () {
    const id = Date.now()
    this.props.addItem({ id, name: `Item - ${id}` })
  }

  renderItems () {
    return this.props.items.map(item => <Item key={item.id} {...item} />)
  }

  render () {
    return <div>{this.renderItems()}</div>
  }
}

const mapDispatchToProps = { addItem }
const mapStateToProps = state => ({ items: state })
const ListContainer = ReactRedux.connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)(List)

const Store = Redux.createStore(itemsReducer)
const Provider = ReactRedux.Provider

ReactDOM.render(
  <Provider store={Store}>
    <ListContainer />
  </Provider>,
  document.getElementById('container')
)

<script src="https://unpkg.com/react@16/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@16/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/redux/4.0.0/redux.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-redux/5.0.7/react-redux.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/babel-polyfill/6.26.0/polyfill.min.js"></script>

<div id="container">
    <!-- This element's contents will be replaced with your component. -->
</div>

Solutions:

1. If the performance problem is caused by MyRow rerending, please find out what's the reason of rerending, because it should not happen, because of PureComponent usage.
   • You can try to simplify your reducer, in order to check / debug, is the reducer causing the problem. For instance, just add the new item to the list (without doing anything else as filtrations, slice, etc): myList: [ ...state.myList, payload ]
   • Please make sure you always pass the same key to your item component <MyRow key={list.id} data={list} />. If the key or data props are changed, then the component will be rerendered.

---

2. Here are some other libraries, these stand for efficient rendering of lists. I'm sure they will give us some alternatives or insights:

   • react-virtualized - React components for efficiently rendering large lists and tabular data
   • react-infinite - A browser-ready efficient scrolling container based on UITableView

---

Answer 2

PureComponent will shallowly compare the props and state. So my guess here is that the items are somehow new objects than the previous passed props, thus the rerendering.

I would advice, in general, to only pass primitive values in pure components :

class MyList extends Component {
    render() {
        return (
            <div>
                {this.props.myList.map((item, index) => (
                    <MyRow key={item.id} id={item.id} name={data.name} />
                    //or it's alternative 
                    <MyRow key={item.id} {...item} />
                ))}
            </div>
        );
    }
}

//...

class MyRow extends PureComponent {
    render() {
        const {id, name} = this.props;
        return (
            <div>
                {id} - {name}
            </div>
        );
    }
}