Skeleton Loading Screens – React

Introduction

Skeleton loading screens, also known as skeleton loading animations, are a great way to provide a good user experience while waiting for content to load. They are especially useful when working with slow networks or large datasets. In this tutorial, we will learn how to implement skeleton loading screens in a React application using the Skeleton Loading Screens library.

What are Skeleton Loading Screens?

Skeleton loading screens are a technique used to provide a loading animation that mimics the actual content that will be displayed once the data is loaded. This animation is typically made up of rectangles or other shapes that give the user an idea of what the content will look like. The rectangles or shapes are usually filled with a gradient or a light color to give the appearance of being "skeletal".

Why Use Skeleton Loading Screens?

Skeleton loading screens are useful for several reasons:

• They provide a better user experience by giving the user a sense of what the content will look like.
• They can help to reduce the perceived wait time by giving the user something to focus on while the content is loading.
• They can be used to improve the appearance of slow-loading pages.

Getting Started with Skeleton Loading Screens in React

To get started with skeleton loading screens in React, we will need to install the Skeleton Loading Screens library. We can do this by running the following command in our terminal:

npm install skeleton-loading-screens

Step 1: Import the Library

Once the library is installed, we can import it in our React component:

import Skeleton from 'skeleton-loading-screens';

Step 2: Wrap the Component with the Skeleton Loading Screen

We can then wrap our component with the skeleton loading screen using the withSkeletonLoadingScreen higher-order component (HOC):

import React from 'react';
import Skeleton from 'skeleton-loading-screens';

const MyComponent = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Skeleton Loading Screen</h1>
      <p>Skeleton loading screen</p>
    </div>
  );
};

export default Skeleton(MyComponent, {
  // Define the skeleton layout
  layout: [
    {
      type: 'rect',
      width: '50%',
      height: '20px',
      padding: '10px'
    },
    {
      type: 'rect',
      width: '30%',
      height: '20px',
      padding: '10px'
    }
  ]
});

In this example, we are defining a skeleton layout that consists of two rectangles. The type property specifies the type of shape to render, the width and height properties specify the dimensions of the shape, and the padding property specifies the amount of padding to add around the shape.

Step 3: Load the Data

Once the skeleton loading screen is in place, we can load the actual data using the useEffect hook:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import Skeleton from 'skeleton-loading-screens';

const MyComponent = () => {
  const [data, setData] = useState(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    // Load the data from an API or database
    fetch('https://example.com/api/data')
     .then(response => response.json())
     .then(data => setData(data));
  }, []);

  if (!data) {
    return <Skeleton />;
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>{data.title}</h1>
      <p>{data.description}</p>
    </div>
  );
};

export default Skeleton(MyComponent, {
  // Define the skeleton layout
  layout: [
    {
      type: 'rect',
      width: '50%',
      height: '20px',
      padding: '10px'
    },
    {
      type: 'rect',
      width: '30%',
      height: '20px',
      padding: '10px'
    }
  ]
});

In this example, we are loading data from an API or database using the fetch API. Once the data is loaded, we are rendering the actual content using the data state.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to implement skeleton loading screens in a React application using the Skeleton Loading Screens library. We also learned how to define the skeleton layout and load the actual data using the useEffect hook. By following these steps, we can provide a better user experience by giving the user a sense of what the content will look like while it is loading.