ember-router-scroll

Scroll to page top on transition, like a non-SPA website. An alternative scroll behavior for Ember applications.

Why Use it?

Ember expects an application to be rendered with nested views. The default behavior is for the scroll position to be preserved on every transition. However, not all Ember applications use nested views. For these applications, a user would expect to see the top of the page on most transitions.

In addition to scrolling to the top of the page on most transitions, a user would expect the scroll position to be preserved when using the back or forward browser buttons.

ember-router-scroll makes your single page application feel more like a regular website.

Compatibility

Ember.js v2.18 or above
Ember CLI v2.13 or above

Installation

ember install ember-router-scroll

Usage

1. Import ember-router-scroll

You need to import the mixin in your app/router.js file, so it will be injected in all your routes. Also, you have to add RouterScroll as an extension to your Router object:

// app/router.js

import RouterScroll from 'ember-router-scroll';

const Router = EmberRouter.extend(PageTrackerMixin, RouterScroll, {
  ...
});

2. Enable historySupportMiddleware in your app

Edit config/environment.js and add historySupportMiddleware: true, to get live-reload working in nested routes. (See Issue #21)

historySupportMiddleware: true,

This location type inherits from Ember's HistoryLocation.

3. If using old style QUnit tests. If tests based on RFC, you can ignore this. In your router and controller tests, add 'service:router-scroll' and 'service:scheduler' as dependencies in the needs: [] block:

//{your-app}}/tests/unit/routes/{{your-route}}.js
needs:[ 'service:router-scroll', 'service:scheduler' ],

Options

Target Elements

If you need to scroll to the top of an area that generates a vertical scroll bar, you can specify the id of an element of the scrollable area. Default is window for using the scroll position of the whole viewport. You can pass an options object in your application's config/environment.js file.

ENV['routerScroll'] = {
  scrollElement: '#mainScrollElement'
};

If you want to scroll to a target element on the page, you can specify the id or class of the element on the page. This is particularly useful if instead of scrolling to the top of the window, you want to scroll to the top of the main content area (that does not generate a vertical scrollbar).

ENV['routerScroll'] = {
  targetElement: '#main-target-element' // or .main-target-element
};

Scroll Timing

You may want the default "out of the box" behaviour. We schedule scroll after Ember's render. This occurs on the tightest schedule between route transition start and end

However, you have other options. You may need to delay scroll functionality until after the First Meaningful Paint using scrollWhenPainted: true in your config. scrollWhenPainted defaults to false.

Then next two config properties uses ember-app-scheduler, so be sure to follow the instructions in the README. We include the setupRouter and reset. This all happens after routeDidChange.

ENV['routerScroll'] = {
  scrollWhenPainted: true
};

Also, if you need to perform the logic when the route is idle or if your route breaks up render into multiple phases, add delayScrollTop: true in your config. delayScrollTop defaults to false. This will be renamed to scrollWhenIdle in a major release.

ENV['routerScroll'] = {
  delayScrollTop: true
};

I would suggest trying all of them out and seeing which works best for your app!

A working example

See demo made by Jon Chua.

A visual demo

Before

Notice that the in the full purple page, the user is sent to the middle of the page.

After

Notice that the in the full purple page, the user is sent to the top of the page.

Issues with nested routes

Before:

Notice the unwanted scroll to top in this case.

After:

Adding a query parameter or controller property fixes this issue.

preserveScrollPosition with queryParams

In certain cases, you might want to have certain routes preserve scroll position when coming from a specific location. For example, inside your application, there is a way to get to a route where the user expects scroll position to be preserved (such as a tab section).

1. Add query param in controller

Add preserveScrollPosition as a queryParam in the controller for the route that needs to preserve the scroll position.

Example:

import Controller from '@ember/controller';

export default Controller.extend({
  queryParams: [
    'preserveScrollPosition',
  ],
});

2. Pass in query param

Next, in the place where a transition is triggered, pass in preserveScrollPosition=true. For example

{{link-to "About Tab" 'tab.about' (query-params preserveScrollPosition=true) }}

preserveScrollPosition with a controller property

In other cases, you may have certain routes that always preserve scroll position, or routes where the controller can decide when to preserve scroll position. For instance, you may have some nested routes that have true nested UI where preserving scroll position is expected. Or you want a particular route to start off with the default scroll-to-top behavior but then preserve scroll position when query params change in response to user interaction. Using a controller property also allows the use of preserveScrollPosition without adding this to the query params.

1. Add query param to controller

Add preserveScrollPosition as a controller property for the route that needs to preserve the scroll position. In this example we have preserveScrollPosition initially set to false so that we get our normal scroll-to-top behavior when the route loads. Later on, when an action triggers a change to the filter query param, we also set preserveScrollPosition to true so that this user interaction does not trigger the scroll-to-top behavior.

Example:

import Controller from '@ember/controller';

export default Controller.extend({
  queryParams: ['filter'],

  preserveScrollPosition: false,

  actions: {
    changeFilter(filter) {
      this.set('preserveScrollPosition', true);
      this.set('filter', filter);
    }
  }
});

2. Reset preserveScrollPosition if necessary

If your controller is changing the preserveScrollPosition property, you'll probably need to reset preserveScrollPosition back to the default behavior whenever the controller is reset. This is not necessary on routes where preserveScrollPosition is always set to true.

import Router from '@ember/routing/route';

export default Route.extend({
  resetController(controller) {
    controller.set('preserveScrollPosition', false);
  }
});

preserveScrollPosition via service

You may need to programatically control preserveScrollPosition directly from a component. This can be achieved by toggling the preserveScrollPosition property on the routerScroll service.

One common use case for this is when using query-param-based pagination on a page where preserveScrollPosition is expected to be false.

For example, if a route should always scroll to top when loaded, preserveScrollPosition would be false. However, a user may then scroll down the page and paginate through some results (where each page is a query param). But because preserveScrollPosition is false, the page will scroll back to top on each of these paginations.

This can be fixed by temporarily setting preserveScrollPosition to true on the service in the pagination transition action and then disabling preserveScrollPosition after the transition occurs.

Note: if preserveScrollPosition is set to true on the service, it will override any values set on the current route's controller - whether query param or controller property.

1. Manage preserveScrollPosition via service

When you need to modify preserveScrollPosition on the service for a specific transition, you should always reset the value after the transition occurs, otherwise all future transitions will use the same preserveScrollPosition value.

Example:

import Component from '@ember/component';
import { inject as service } from '@ember/service';

export default Component.extend({
  routerScroll: service(),
  router: service(),

  actions: {
    async goToPaginationPage(pageNumber) {
      this.set('routerScroll.preserveScrollPosition', true);
      await this.router.transitionTo(
        this.router.currentRouteName,
        {
          queryParams: { page: pageNumber }
        }
      );

      // Reset `preserveScrollPosition` after transition so future transitions behave as expected
      this.set('routerScroll.preserveScrollPosition', false);
    }
  }
});

Running Tests

npm test (Runs ember try:testall to test your addon against multiple Ember versions)
ember test
ember test --server

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

mehulkar/ember-router-scroll

ember-router-scroll

Why Use it?

Compatibility

Installation

Usage

Options

Target Elements

Scroll Timing

A working example

A visual demo

Before

After

Issues with nested routes

Before:

After:

preserveScrollPosition with queryParams

preserveScrollPosition with a controller property

preserveScrollPosition via service

Running Tests

License