Restore scroll y position react-router-dom

Question

Here I reproduced a simple snippet with a page transition made using react-spring.

Is there a way to restore the previous page scroll position when clicking on the browser back button?

There are many related QAs around, but I couldn't find any solution when using animation libraries

Any idea how this could be achieved?

Answer 1

It's not so easy to restore scrollY position while navigating. We might need a context for storing y positions for pages. Below is my solution.

custom hook for listening scroll event(hooks/scroll.js)

import { useEffect, useState } from 'react';
import { useLocation } from 'react-router-dom';

export const useScrollPositions = () => {
  const [positions, setPositions] = useState(new Map());
  const location = useLocation();

  useEffect(() => {
    const listener = (ev) => {
      console.log('position: ', ev.target.scrollTop);
      positions.set(location.pathname, { 
        left: ev.target.scrollLeft, 
        top: ev.target.scrollTop
      });
      setPositions(new Map(positions));
    }

    window.addEventListener('scroll', listener, true);

    return () => {
      window.removeEventListener('scroll', listener, true);
    }
  }, [location]);

  return positions;
}

context for storing y positions for pages(context/scroll-context.js)

import { createContext } from 'react';

export const ScrollContext = createContext();

Wrapping all pages inside context provider: App component

const App = () => {
  const location = useLocation();
  const positions = useScrollPositions();

  const transitions = useTransition(location, {
    from: { opacity: 0, transform: 'translate3d(100vw, 0, 0)' },
    enter: { opacity: 1, transform: 'translate3d(0, 0, 0)' },
    leave: { opacity: 0, transform: 'translate3d(-20vw, 0, 0)' },
  });

  return (
    <ScrollContext.Provider value={positions}>
      <GlobalStyles />
      <Switch>
        <Route path='/' exact component={Home} />
        <Route path="/about" component={About} />
      </Switch>
      {transitions((props, item) => (
        <animated.div style={props}>
          <Switch location={item}>
            <Route path="/" exact component={Home} />
            <Route path="/about" exact component={About} />
          </Switch>
        </animated.div>
      ))}
    </ScrollContext.Provider>
  );
};

Page component that does scrolling

import React, { useEffect, useRef, useContext } from 'react';
import { useLocation } from 'react-router-dom';
import { ScrollContext } from '../context/scroll-context';

const Page = ({children, ...rest}) => {

  const main = useRef();
  const positions = useContext(ScrollContext);
  const location = useLocation();

  useEffect(() => {
    if (main.current) {
      const position = positions.get(location.pathname);
      if (position && position.top) {
        main.current.scrollTop = position.top;
      }
    }
  }, [])

  return (
    <main {...rest} ref={main}>
      {children}
    </main>
  )
}

export default Page

Note: You have to wrap all pages inside this page component. CSS style of this page component(scroll: auto) is also important. In real world projects, it might needs more flexible codes. Anyway, for a full working project, please check here

Answer 2

You can call the below method when unmounting a component and preserve it.

export const getScrollPage = (): number => {
  let docScrollTop = 0;
  if (document.documentElement && document.documentElement !== null) {
    docScrollTop = document.documentElement.scrollTop;
  }
  return window.pageYOffset || docScrollTop;
};

use the preserved value of scroll y position and pass to below function.

export const scrollTo = (scrollnumber: number = 0): number =>
  window.requestAnimationFrame(() => {
    window.scrollTo(0, scrollnumber);
  });