Preserve scrolling position in Ember Apps

scroll
Brian Cardarella

CEO & Founder

Brian Cardarella

If you have a long list of items on a page and a user follows a link then goes back to that list, Ember will re-render the list and the user loses their place. This can be annoying if there is a very long list of items and the user is expected to be switching back and forth between the list and the item.

We can preserve the position by taking advantage of didInsertElement on the list’s view.

Ember Starter Kit

Note: there seems to be a bug with the latest stable in Chrome where the position is never reset if you hit the backbutton. In reality it is but the position doesn’t render until you scroll. Canary seems OK as do other browsers

In the above example you can scroll down, click on an item, then head back to the list and be in your original position. This is all done with the following mixin:

var ScrollableMixin = Ember.Mixin.create({
  scrollingTimeout: 100,
  bindScrolling: function() {
    var self = this,
    onScroll = function() {
      Ember.run.debounce(self, self.runScrolled, self.scrollingTimeout);
    };

    Ember.$(document).on('touchmove.scrollable', onScroll);
    Ember.$(window).on('scroll.scrollable', onScroll);
  }.on('didInsertElement'),

  unbindScrolling: function() {
    Ember.$(window).off('.scrollable');
    Ember.$(document).off('.scrollable');
  }.on('willDestroyElement'),

  preservePos: function() {
    Ember.$(window).scrollTop(this.getWithDefault('controller.currentPos', 0));
  }.on('didInsertElement'),

  runScrolled: function() {
    var position = Ember.$(document).height() - Ember.$(window).scrollTop();
    var viewportHeight = document.documentElement.clientHeight;
    this.set('controller.currentPos', Ember.$(window).scrollTop());
  }
});

You then mix it into your list’s view:

ThingsView = Ember.View.extend(ScrollableMixin);

Enjoy!

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