use-justified-layout

Flickr's justified-layout in a React hook. Calculate justified layouts to create beautiful image galleries or whatever you want.

Installation

npm i use-justified-layout

Basic usage

import useJustifiedLayout from 'use-justified-layout'
import images from './images'

const Gallery = () => {
  const [layout] = useJustifiedLayout({
    layoutInput: images
  })
    
  return (
    <div style={{position: "relative", height={layout.containerHeight}}>
      {layout.boxes.map(({width, height, top, left}, index) => (
        <img
          width={width}
          height={height}
          style={{ top, left, position: "absolute" }}
          src={images[index].url}
        />
      ))}
    </div>
  )
}

Hook API

Return

useJustifiedLayout returns and array of two elements: [layout, layoutIsReady]

• layoutIsReady: a boolean that indicates whether or not the layout calculation is ready. Useful in cases where you want to show a loader to the user.

• layout: the LayoutGeometry object returned by the original justified-layout library. The type is defined as follow:

  type LayoutGeometry = {
    containerHeight: number;
    widowCount: number;
    boxes: Box[];
  };

  • containerHeight is the height of the complete layout, it is necessary since you need to use position: absolute to display the items. This attribute will help you avoid things to overlap in your DOM.

  • widowCount is the number of items at the end of a layout that doesn't make a full row. For example, the next layout will have a widowCount value of 2.

    

  • boxes are the calculated attributes for every item in your layout. A box has the following shape:

    type Box = {
      aspectRatio: number;
      top: number;
      width: number;
      height: number;
      left: number;
    };

Params

The hooks accepts a object with the following shape:

interface IUseJustifiedLayout {
  layoutInput: LayoutInput;
  configuration?: LayoutConfiguration;
  dependencies?: ReadonlyArray<unknown>;
}

• layoutInput: information about the items, necessary to calculate the layout.

  type AspectRatio = number;
  
  type SizeObject = {
    width: number;
    height: number;
  };
  
  type LayoutInput = AspectRatio[] | SizeObject[];

  As you can see, you have to options when passing layoutInput:

  • Aspect ratios: [1.33, 1, 0.65]

  • Size objects:

    [{
        width: 400,
        height: 300
    },
    {
        width: 300,
        height: 300
    },
    {
        width: 250,
        height: 400
    }]

• dependencies: this is an array with the same function as the dependencies array that you pass to an useEffect hook. When a value of this array changes, the layout gets recalculated. By default, the layout will recalculate if the layoutInput changes.

• configuration: you can use the following attributes to customize the layout output. This table comes from the justified-layout library documentation (with a slight modifications), you can see the original here.

  Name	Type	Default	Description
  containerWidth	number	1060	The width that boxes will be contained within irrelevant of padding.
  containerPadding	number	ContainerPadding	10
  boxSpacing	number	BoxSpacing	10
  targetRowHeight	number	0.25	How far row heights can stray from targetRowHeight. 0 would force rows to be the targetRowHeight exactly and would likely make it impossible to justify. The value must be between 0 and 1
  maxNumRows	number	none	Will stop adding rows at this number regardless of how many items still need to be laid out.
  forceAspectRatio	boolean	number	false
  showWidows	boolean	true	By default we'll return items at the end of a justified layout even if they don't make a full row. If false they'll be omitted from the output.
  fullWidthBreakoutRowCadence	boolean	number	false

Configuration examples

Please visit the justified-layout documentation to get more ideas on how to play with the configurations.

Demos

WIP :)