NgForTrackByProperty

Angular global trackBy property directive with strict type checking.

Description

When displaying a list of data (at least somewhat large lists) you should be using Angular's trackBy feature which looks something like:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

interface Item { 
  id: number; 
  name: string;
}

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  template: `
    <ul>
      <li *ngFor="let item of list; trackBy: trackById">
        {{ item.id }} {{ item.name }}
      </li>
    </ul>
  `,
})
export class AppListComponent {
  public list: Array<Item> = [
    { id: 0, name: 'foo' },
    { id: 1, name: 'bar' },
    { id: 2, name: 'baz' },
  ];

  public trackById(index: number, item: Item) {
    return item.id;
  }
}

Unfortunately, Angular forces us to write a tracking function in each component in which we want to make use of trackBy. With ng-for-track-by-property you could just handle this entirely in the template by passing a property like this:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

interface Item { 
  id: number; 
  name: string;
}

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  template: `
    <ul>
      <li *ngFor="let item of list; trackByProperty: 'id'">
        {{ item.id }} {{ item.name }}
      </li>
    </ul>
  `,
})
export class AppListComponent {
  public list: Array<Item> = [
    { id: 0, name: 'foo' },
    { id: 1, name: 'bar' },
    { id: 2, name: 'baz' },
  ];
}

ng-for-track-by-property has strict type checking and only available property are allowed

See the stackblitz demo.

Features

✅ trackBy property name
✅ Type casting
✅ trackBy index

Get Started

Step 1: install ng-for-track-by-property

npm i ng-for-track-by-property

Step 2: Import NgForTrackByPropertyModule into your app module, eg.:

import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { AppComponent } from './app.component';
import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common';
import { NgForTrackByPropertyModule } from 'ng-for-track-by-property';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [AppComponent],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    CommonModule,
    NgForTrackByPropertyModule,
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent],
  ],
})
export class AppModule { }

Step 3: add trackByProperty to your ngFor, eg.:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

interface Item { 
  id: number; 
  name: string;
}

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  template: `
    <ul>
      <li *ngFor="let item of list; trackByProperty: 'id'">
        {{ item.id }} {{ item.name }}
      </li>
    </ul>
  `,
})
export class AppComponent {
  public list: Array<Item> = [
    { id: 0, name: 'foo' },
    { id: 1, name: 'bar' },
    { id: 2, name: 'baz' },
  ];
}

you can also track by index with trackByIndex, eg.:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

interface Item { 
  id: number; 
  name: string;
}

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  template: `
    <ul>
      <li *ngFor="let item of list; trackByIndex">
        {{ item.id }} {{ item.name }}
      </li>
    </ul>
  `,
})
export class AppComponent {
  public list: Array<Item> = [
    { id: 0, name: 'foo' },
    { id: 1, name: 'bar' },
    { id: 2, name: 'baz' },
  ];
}

since track by property id is a very common case, there is also trackById:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

interface Item { 
  id: number; 
  name: string;
}

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  template: `
    <ul>
      <li *ngFor="let item of list; trackById">
        {{ item.id }} {{ item.name }}
      </li>
    </ul>
  `,
})
export class AppComponent {
  public list: Array<Item> = [
    { id: 0, name: 'foo' },
    { id: 1, name: 'bar' },
    { id: 2, name: 'baz' },
  ];
}

Available directives

Directive	HTML template syntax	TrackBy function
trackByProperty: key	`*ngFor="let item of arr; trackByProperty: 'id'"`	`(index, item) => item[key]`
trackByIndex	`*ngFor="let item of arr; trackByIndex"`	`(index, item) => index`
trackById	`*ngFor="let item of arr; trackById"`	`(index, item) => item.id`

Support

This is an open-source project. Star this repository, if you like it, or even donate. Thank you so much!

My other libraries

I have published some other Angular libraries, take a look: