Creating a Stunning Image Gallery using React Image Gallery

When it comes to building a website, a visually appealing image gallery can make a huge difference in the overall user experience. React Image Gallery is a popular and flexible Reactjs component library that can help you create a stunning gallery for your website. In this article, we will explore the features of React Image Gallery and show you how to use it to create a beautiful and responsive image gallery.

If you’re looking for full code You can find it on GitHub

What is React Image Gallery?

React Image Gallery is a versatile React component library that provides a simple and intuitive interface for creating beautiful image galleries. It offers a wide range of customization options, making it suitable for different types of websites.

Features of React Image Gallery

Here are some of the features that make React Image Gallery stand out:

• Responsive design: The style and dimensions of React Picture Gallery are automatically adjusted depending on the screen size of the device because it is made to be responsive.
• Customizable layout: The component library provides a flexible layout that can be customized to fit your website design.
• Touch and swipe support: It supports touch and swipes gestures, making it easy to navigate through the images on mobile devices.
• Keyboard navigation: The component library also supports keyboard navigation, allowing users to navigate through the images using the arrow keys.
• Lazy loading: It supports lazy loading of images, which means that images are loaded only when they are needed, reducing the page load time.

Also Read: Next JS vs React: Which One to Use for Your Next Web Project?

Getting started with React Image Gallery

We will install the react-image-gallery package via npm with the following command –

npm install react-image-gallery

Once you have installed React Image Gallery, you can import it into your project:

import ImageGallery from 'react-image-gallery';

Next, you can create an array of images to display in the gallery, We are using images from pexels.com

const images = [
  {
    original:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/831889/pexels-photo-831889.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=1280",
    thumbnail:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/831889/pexels-photo-831889.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=600",
    description: "Description 1",
  },
  {
    original:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/1683492/pexels-photo-1683492.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=1280",
    thumbnail:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/1683492/pexels-photo-1683492.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=600",
    description: "Description 2",
  },
  {
    original:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/1630128/pexels-photo-1630128.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=1280",
    thumbnail:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/1630128/pexels-photo-1630128.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=600",
    description: "Description 3",
  },
  {
    original:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/2273664/pexels-photo-2273664.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=1280",
    thumbnail:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/2273664/pexels-photo-2273664.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=600",
    description: "Description 4",
  },
  {
    original:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/572740/pexels-photo-572740.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=1280",
    thumbnail:
      "https://images.pexels.com/photos/572740/pexels-photo-572740.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=600",
    description: "Description 5",
  },
];

Finally, you can render the image gallery component with the images array:

<ImageGallery items={images} />

You can also customize the appearance and behaviour of the gallery by passing in additional props. For example, you can set the thumbnail width and height or enable autoplay:

<ImageGallery
  items={images}
  showThumbnails={false}
  showFullscreenButton={false}
  autoPlay={true}
  slideInterval={5000}
/>

Customizing Image Gallery

React Image Gallery provides a wide range of customization options to make the gallery fit your website design. Here are some of the options you can customize:

• Thumbnail position: You can choose where to position the thumbnail images relative to the main image.
• Slide duration: You can specify the duration of each slide in milliseconds.
• Slide interval: You can specify the interval between slides in milliseconds.
• Infinite sliding: You can enable infinite sliding, allowing the gallery to loop through the images continuously.
• Show full-screen button: You can choose to show or hide the full-screen button.

If you want to further customize your gallery, ReactJS Image Gallery provides a range of callbacks and event handlers that you can use to control the behaviour of the gallery.

Adding Image Lazyload

You can use the onImageLoad callback to perform an action when an image is loaded:

function handleImageLoad(event) {
  console.log('Image loaded:', event.target);
}

<ImageGallery items={images} onImageLoad={handleImageLoad} />

Customizing Image Render

You can also use the renderItem prop to customize the appearance of each image:

function renderItem(item) {
  return (
    <div className='image-gallery-image'>
      <img src={item.original} alt={item.description} />
      <div className='image-gallery-description'>{item.description}</div>
    </div>
  );
}

<ImageGallery items={images} renderItem={renderItem} />

Customizing Thumbnail Position

You can also use the thumbnailPosition prop to change the position of the thumbnail strip:

<ImageGallery items={images} thumbnailPosition='left' />

Also Read: How to use GitHub GraphQL API in React or Next JS

Tips for optimizing React Image Gallery

To ensure that your image gallery loads quickly and smoothly, here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Optimize your images: Use optimized images to reduce their file size and improve loading time.
• Lazy loading: You can also enable lazy loading. This will load images only when they are needed.
• Use CDN: Use a content delivery network (CDN) to speed up the delivery of images and reduce server load time.
• Compress your code: Compress your code to reduce the size of your JavaScript files and improve page load time.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Conclusion

ReactJS Image Gallery is a powerful and versatile component that makes it easy to create beautiful and responsive image galleries for your website. With a wide range of customization options and features, you can easily create a gallery that will impress your website and visitors. Whether you’re building a portfolio, an e-commerce site, or a personal blog, ReactJS Image Gallery is a great tool to have in your development arsenal. So go ahead, try it out, and see what amazing galleries you can create!