InfiniTimeline

A Vue 3 component for displaying provided collection of time-based events as a timeline with 'infinite' scrolling down powered by useInfiniteScroll from VueUse.

For questions and bug reports visit project`s GitHub repository.

About

This package provides a <InfiniTimeline /> Vue 3 component. The component takes a data source and displays given data elements along the central top-down axis. On wider screens the data are displayed in two altering columns, on narrow screens columns colapse into one.

The component keeps loading more entries from the source as user scrolls down with a mouse until the data source is depleated (or the browser tab crashes).

It is possible to select, whether the entry title is just a plain text or if the values hold inside title represent JS date. This titleFormat option defaults to 'text'. If 'date' is requested, the output can be adjusted via titleDateFormat string. The formatting is made using useDateFormat function from VueUse. The format defaults to YYYY-MM-DD. Those settings can be fine-grained for each entry separately (see Providing data) or defined component-wide via props (see Props reference)

Providing data

Data elements are represented by a following object:

type InfiniTimelineItem = {
  // unique identifier used as the `key` attribute for inner `v-for` cycle
  id: number,
  // text displayed in first row (usually meant to be a date of an event)       
  title: string,
  // allows to pick between plain text and JS Date representation of the title (defaults to 'text')
  titleFormat: 'text' | 'date',
  // formatting options, if `titleFormat='date'` is selected (defaults to 'YYYY-MM-DD')
  // see https://vueuse.org/shared/useDateFormat/ for allowed options
  titleDateFormat?: string,
  // text displayed in second row (description of an event)
  content: string,
  // potential "tooltip" text displayed upon mouse hovering over given data entry
  tooltip?: string
  // potential image source to be displayed next to each item
  imageSrc?: string
}

To supply the component with data you need to provide either a data-array or a data-supplier (see props).

Stick with data-array if the number of entries to display is fixed and small. Usage is pretty straigtforward - build and array and pass it to the component.

Creating data-supplier requires to implement following functions:

export interface InfiniTimelineSupplier {
  // return the maximum number of items that are possible to be fetched
  getTotal(): number,
  // fetch a next batch of items
  get(startIndex: number, chunkSize: number): InfiniTimelineItem[]
  // set to `true`to notifiy timeline about changes
  // NOTE: supplier must be decalared as Ref<InfiniTimelineSupplier> (check `Dynamic loading` for more info)
  changes?: boolean
}

This concept of "lazy" requires extra effort, but it may help reducing site traffic as the data are only loaded when really needed and required by the user.

Ultimately the choice is yours, but you need to provide one or an error is raised during component initialization. If both variants are provided, data-array will be used and the supplier will be ignored.

Regardless the data source only an initial portion of data elements is displayed upon mounting the component. Its size can be adjusted by chunk-size prop. Further elements are being loaded and appended as user scrolls down. The browser native scroll is hidden by CSS, because it doesn't look good, but the component is scrollable with mousewheel or arrow keys when focused.

Dynamic loading

It is possible to benefit from Vue 3 reactivity system and dynamically re-load the timeline whenever items are added/modified/removed.

For data-array the only thing you have to do, is to declare the array in parent as a ref or reactive object. Otherwise the watcher inside timeline component won't be able to detect changes.

For data-supplier you also need to declare it as a ref/reactive, but in addition to that, you also have to manually trigger changes option to true. This will be detected by a dedicated watcher.

If the change in provided data is detected (automatically for data-array or when data-supplier's changes is manually set to true), the timeline resets - the initial batch of data will be (re)loaded and the div auto-scrolls to top. The watcher for data-supplier also reverts changes back to false.

Props reference

The component takes following props:

• data-array - pre-rendered array of InfiniTimelineItem. Use when the number of data entries is reasonably small. If declared as Ref<InfiniTimelineItem[]> in parent, reactive changes will be possible out of the box.
• data-supplier - implementation of InfiniTimelineSupplier for "lazy" loading of data entries. Preffer when pre-loading all the instances in memory would hurt the performance. If declared as Ref<InfiniTimelineSupplier[]> in parent, reactive changes will be possible. You have to set .changes = true to notify the timeline component.
• chunk-size - the number of entries to be initially loaded into scroll view area and then re-loaded each time as user scrolls down. Defaults to 10.
• images - setting to true will enable displaying small thumbnails next to each item. Defaults to false.
• blank-image - path to placeholder image that will be displayed if images = true and no imageSrc provided for current item. If no value provided (default), no image will be displayed.
• logging - setting to true will enable console debug logs to help you troubleshooting. Defaults to false and thus no debug logs. If used, remember to disable again for production!
• css-bg-color - allows you to customize background color for each data entry. Must be stringified CSS color expression. Defaults to transparent.
• css-text-color - allows you to customize text color for each data entry. By default this color also applies to central axis and the pointer icons. Must be stringified CSS color expression. Defaults to black.
• title-format - allows you pick whether the item's title will be displayed as plain text (text) or formatted as date (date). Defaults to text. Settings from individual items will override this override component-level default.
• title-date-format - allows you to specify the formatting string for item titles represented as date. Must be valid string for useDateFormat. Defaults to YYYY-MM-DD. Settings from individual items will override this component-level default.

CSS customization

Currently basic CSS styling (except background and text color) is built-in. Couple of CSS pre-sets to choose from via prop is planned in future versions.

To override default styles manually you can utilize the CSS class structure:

• The whole component is wrapped with a timeline-wrapper div
• Data element stack vertically and each resides exactly one row wrapped inside timeline-slot div
• Each row contains exactly one timeline-item div which is then altering between timeline-item-left and timeline-item-right class controlling its position on either side of the central axis
• For displaying the actual data each item has a timeline-data div elemenent
  • there may be timeline-image either before or after the main content, if images are set to be displayed
  • timeline-content holds the actual content consisting of timeline-content-title and timeline-content-text
• Central axis is represented by timeline-axis class which basically just fills the empty space between timeline-item and timeline-separator which is the empty space on the other side (both divs are little less than 50% wide)
• Pointer icons are made width svg elements (currenty hardcoded) that are wrapped inside timeline-pointer class

Changelog

• v0.5.0 (2024-10-27) - timeline item may display a thumbnail
• v0.4.0 (2023-12-14) - add reactivity + prevent infinite reloading loop
• v0.3.0 (2023-11-18) - allows item titles to be formatted either as text or a date
• v0.2.0 (2023-10-25) - CSS fixes and adjustments
• v0.1.0 (2023-10-24) - first text version