In this episode, we walk through building an infinite scroll pattern in Vue—a super common feature you see in apps where you load more content as you scroll. Don’t worry if your backend or specific stack is a little different; the ideas here can be used in just about any front-end setup. We use a Laravel API for the demo, but the concepts are universal.
First, we check out a working demo and do a quick overview of client-side rendering, paginated API responses, and how requests are triggered as the user scrolls down. You'll see how APIs typically return data in chunks (pages) and how to use meta information (like the last page number) to know when to stop fetching. We start simple, making an initial request and displaying data, and gradually add infinite scroll by using the vue-observe-visibility
package. This package leverages the Intersection Observer API to detect when the user reaches the bottom of the list so we know when to load more content.
We cover a few gotchas, like avoiding duplicate requests and weird re-rendering behaviors, by adding checks (for example, only triggering the fetch when the intersection observer says it's actually visible, and stopping once we fetch the last available page). Debugging steps, like watching the browser's network tab, are included so you can see how the data flow works in real time.
Once our infinite scroll is working, we take things up a notch by refactoring the code into a reusable Vue component called <infinite-scroll>
. This makes the infinite scroll pattern super easy to use anywhere in your app—just pass in the items (like articles, users, etc.), and use a scoped slot to customize how each item gets rendered. The component emits events when more data needs to be loaded, so you’re not tying your fetching logic directly to the scroll logic.
By the end, you’ll have a clean, reusable solution for infinite scroll in Vue—plus options for keeping the basic logic inline if you only need it in one or two places. Lots of tips along the way for managing state, keeping your UI responsive, and making sure you don’t hammer your API with unnecessary requests.
So, whether you want to keep things simple or abstract it away for reuse, you’ll get practical patterns for building infinite scroll in any Vue project!