How to Build Infinite Scrolling in Laravel: A Dev Guide

For years, as a Laravel developer, I sought the perfect solution for smooth infinite scrolling. Most approaches failed under heavy usage until I optimized a client's site. They needed thousands of products to stream endlessly for shoppers. After implementing my technique, even our most populated categories flew by with ease. Now, I'm ready to share those same secrets that led to their success. In this post, I'll walk through how to build lightning-fast infinite scrolling that satisfies even the most scroll-hungry users. More performance means happier customers and fewer headaches - doesn't that sound appealing?

Laying the Groundwork

For this project, I chose to work with the latest Laravel 8 release for its blade components and improved routing. Additional dependencies included Bootstrap for basic styling, jQuery to simplify DOM manipulation, and the Infinite Scroll library to handle smooth loading.

Folder Structure

My file organization followed Laravel's default structure with a few tweaks. Models, controllers, and other app codes reside under app/ while frontend assets go in resources/.

• app/
  • Models
  • Http/Controllers
• database/
  • migrations
  • seeds
• resources/

  • js/

  • css/

  • views/

    
    

Setting Up the Database

The products will be fetched from a SQLite database. I created a products table with fields like id, title, image using migrations.

Schema::create('products', function (Blueprint $table) { $table->id(); $table->string('title'); $table->string('image'); //other fields });

Sample data was then seeded into the table to test scrolling large datasets of 10,000 records. Now the foundations were in place to start building out the infinite scroll functionality.

Designing the Database

For this demo, I created a simple product database with only three fields - id, title, and image. The id is an auto-incrementing primary key, while the title and image are text fields.

Creating the Models

Eloquent models provide an object-oriented interface to interact with the database. I generated a Product model that corresponds to the products table:

php artisan make:model Product

This created a Product.php model file under app/Models. I defined the fields that should be mass assignable and established the table name:

class Product extends Model { protected $fillable = ['title', 'image'];

protected $table = 'products'; }

Now I have a model to retrieve, save and delete product data from the database in an ORM manner. With the schema and models ready, the next step is to build a RESTful API to serve the product data.

Creating the API

Building the Pagination Controller

I generated an API controller to handle requests for paginated products data:

php artisan make:controller Api/ProductController

This created a ProductController under the Http/Controllers folder.

Writing the API Endpoint

The controller method accepts a page parameter to determine the data slice:

public function index($page) { $perPage = 12;

$products = Product::paginate($perPage);

return response()->json($products); }

Testing with Postman

With the API built, I fired up Postman to test fetching pages of results. Calls to /api/products?page=1 returned the first 12 products. Increasing the page number loaded the next set. This confirmed my API was correctly paginating large product result sets to support the eventual infinite scrolling of records.

Implementing Infinite Scroll Adding the Infinite Scroll Plugin I installed the jQuery Infinite Scroll plugin through NPM and added it to my main JS file:

import InfiniteScroll from 'infinite-scroll';

Configuring Plugin Settings

The plugin needs to know what container to monitor for scrolling and where to insert new content:

const div = document.querySelector('.products'); const infScroll = new InfiniteScroll( div, { // settings });

Calling the API on Scroll

Each time the user scrolls, a new request is made to fetch the next page:

infScroll.on('load', function(response) {

// call API

infScroll.append(newHtml); });

Displaying Loaded Products

The response data is used to build and insert new product elements into the container. Now, infinite scroll is in effect!

Additional Enhancements

Handling Loading State

It's important to provide feedback while new data loads. I added a loading indicator to replace products:

Automatic vs Manual Scrolling

The plugin supports both behaviors out of the box. I went with manual scrolling for finer user control.

Filtering Search Results

A search box lets users dynamically filter the results. The API accepts query parameters to modify the dataset.

Optimizing Performance

To avoid duplicate requests, I check if the user is already loading before subsequent scrolls. Response data is also cached in memory for future identical queries. With these tweaks, I achieved silky smooth infinite loading for catalogs of 1000s of products. Users could now immerse themselves in scanning items without impedance.

Conclusion

The journey to build a performant infinite scroll in Laravel was quite the learning experience. While it may seem daunting at first, breaking the problem down into incremental steps makes the solution surprisingly straightforward to implement. What began as a frustration with laggy UX became a fascinating technical challenge. I hope you now feel empowered to apply these techniques to your own Laravel projects.

Beyond the code, my favorite part was seeing how a small optimization could significantly enhance the end-user experience. Of course, there is always room for improvement. As site traffic and data volumes grow, more advanced caching, database patterns, and front-end logic may be required. But this approach provides an excellent starting point before complex solutions are needed. The next time endless scrolling seems like an impossible feat, remember that with some ingenuity, Laravel makes it surprisingly simple. Keep learning, keep building, and don't forget to savor the satisfaction of projects well-crafted. May your next development adventures be as rewarding as this one was for me.