co-virtualize

A React library to enable the extension and decoupling of a component's lifetime.

npm i co-virtualize

Why?

A react component and its animation should live inside that component. This library tries to give components control over their existance and let's them animate themself in a consistent way. For example, let component's transitions from life, to death or from death to life smoothly and consistently.

List Example

Virtualization of components allows to let the virtualized component live after its originator has been killed. A new owner can also regain control of the virtual component to enable all sorts of fancy animations.

How?

We use the useVirtual hook to create a virtual component. The hook takes a component, which should be virtualized and properties for this component and will create an instance of this component as a virtual component. A VirtualBase serves as the origin for all virtual components and offers the required functionality for virtualization.
A virtualized component has, aside from the passed properties, a destroy function as properties.
The destroy function enables the component to end its own existence.
The provided properties are passed to the virtual component in an array called controllerProps. The component the invokes useVirtual is sean as the controller. As seen in the Transition Example, a virtual component can have multiple controllers. When the controller is destroyed, its properties are removed from the controllerProps. However, the virtual component will live on, until it calls destroy itself.
Therefore a virtual component's lifetime is decoupled from its controllers.

Examples

• List - Tutorial for a filtered list that animates the creation and destruction of its ListItems
• Transition - Use multiple controllers for one virtual component