react-imageloader

One of the hardest things to wrangle in the browser is loading. When images and other linked elements appear in the DOM, the browser makes decisions on when to load them that sometimes result in problems for a site and its users, such as FOUC, unexpected load ordering, and degraded performance when many loads are occurring.

This React component can improve the situation by allowing you to display content while waiting for the image to load, as well as by showing alternate content if the image fails to load.

Usage

import React from 'react';
import ImageLoader from 'react-imageloader';

function preloader() {
  return <img src="spinner.gif" />;
}

React.render((
  <ImageLoader
    src="/path/to/image.jpg"
    wrapper={React.DOM.div}
    preloader={preloader}>
    Image load failed!
  </ImageLoader>
), document.body);

Props

Name	Type	Description
className	string	An optional class name for the wrapper component.
imgProps	object	An optional object containing props for the underlying img component.
onError	function	An optional handler for the error event.
onLoad	function	An optional handler for the load event.
preloader	function	An optional function that returns a React element to be shown while the image loads.
src	string	The URL of the image to be loaded.
style	object	An optional object containing styles for the wrapper component.
wrapper	function	A function that takes a props argument and returns a React element to be used as the wrapper component. Defaults to React.DOM.span.

Children

Children passed to ImageLoader will be rendered only if the image fails to load. Children are essentially alternate content to show when the image is missing or unavailable.

For example:

React.createClass({
  // This will only show if "notgonnaload.jpg" doesn't load.
  errorMessage() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h2>Something went wrong!</h2>
        <p>Not gonna load "notgonnaload.jpg". bummer.</p>
      </div>
    );
  },
  render() {
    return (
      <ImageLoader src="notgonnaload.jpg">
        {this.errorMessage()}
      </ImageLoader>
    );
  }
})

Upgrading to 2.x

If you are upgrading to the 2.x version, there are a couple of changes you should be aware of:

• Since 2.0, ImageLoader requires React >= 0.13
• Loading is done 'off DOM' in a JavaScript Image() (instead of hidden in the DOM via a React <img />), so values passed to the onLoad and onError callbacks will be the browser native values, not React's synthesized values. This should't be a problem for the vast majority of use cases, but it is technically an API change.