React Photo Album

React Photo Album is a responsive photo gallery component for React. React Photo Album supports rows, columns, and masonry layouts. Inspired by react-photo-gallery, re-engineered from the ground up.

Overview

Built for React: works with React 18+
SSR friendly: produces server-side rendered markup that looks pixel perfect on the client even before hydration
Responsive images: responsive images with automatic resolution switching are supported out of the box
Feature packed: supports 3 layout options (rows, columns and masonry), responsive images, custom data attributes and is fully configurable and customizable
TypeScript: type definitions come built-in in the package
Performance: it was built with performance in mind in order to support large photo albums

Layouts

Rows

Columns

Masonry

Documentation

https://react-photo-album.com/documentation

Examples

https://react-photo-album.com/examples

Changelog

https://github.com/igordanchenko/react-photo-album/releases

Installation

npm install react-photo-album

Requirements

React 18+
Node 18+
modern ESM-compatible bundler

Minimal Setup Example

import { RowsPhotoAlbum } from "react-photo-album";
import "react-photo-album/rows.css";

const photos = [
  { src: "/image1.jpg", width: 800, height: 600 },
  { src: "/image2.jpg", width: 1600, height: 900 },
];

export default function Gallery() {
  return <RowsPhotoAlbum photos={photos} />;
}

How It Works

Rows Layout

Rows layout fills the container space by arranging photos into rows that are similar in height, with the height of each row being as close to the targetRowHeight as possible. This layout uses an algorithm adapted from the Knuth and Plass line-breaking algorithm. To calculate the optimal layout, it uses Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path in a graph where each photo to break on represents a node, and each row represents an edge. The cost of each edge is calculated as a squared deviation from the targetRowHeight. This algorithm produces rows that are similar in height and photos that are not stretched or abnormally shrunk (as what happens in a naive implementation). It solves the issue of panoramas shrinking rows or having stragglers or stretched images in the last row.

Columns Layout

Columns layout fills the container space by arranging photos into a predefined number of columns, determined by the columns parameter. This layout uses an algorithm very similar to the one described above, with the only difference being that instead of Dijkstra's algorithm, it uses a dynamic programming algorithm to find the shortest path of length N in a directed weighted graph.

Masonry Layout

Masonry layout arranges photos into columns of equal width by placing each photo into the shortest column. This layout does not fill the container space flush to its bottom edge, but the columns end up being as close in height to each other as possible.

Responsive Images

React Photo Album can automatically produce sizes and srcset image attributes. In the case of SSR, React Photo Album includes sizes and srcset image attributes in the server-rendered markup, allowing browsers to pick images of the most appropriate resolution depending on the end-user viewport size. To utilize images with automatic resolution switching, provide images of different resolutions in the photo srcSet attribute. To further improve app responsiveness and bandwidth utilization, you can specify the sizes prop that describes the width of the photo album in various viewports.

import { RowsPhotoAlbum } from "react-photo-album";
import "react-photo-album/rows.css";

const photos = [
  {
    src: "/image1_800x600.jpg",
    width: 800,
    height: 600,
    srcSet: [
      { src: "/image1_400x300.jpg", width: 400, height: 300 },
      { src: "/image1_200x150.jpg", width: 200, height: 150 },
    ],
  },
  {
    src: "/image2_1600x900.jpg",
    width: 1600,
    height: 900,
    srcSet: [
      { src: "/image2_800x450.jpg", width: 800, height: 450 },
      { src: "/image2_400x225.jpg", width: 400, height: 225 },
    ],
  },
];

export default function Gallery() {
  return (
    <RowsPhotoAlbum
      photos={photos}
      sizes={{
        size: "1168px",
        sizes: [
          {
            viewport: "(max-width: 1200px)",
            size: "calc(100vw - 32px)",
          },
        ],
      }}
    />
  );
}

SSR

React Photo Album extensively uses CSS flexbox and CSS calc functions to calculate images' dimensions on the client. Thanks to this approach, server-side rendered markup looks pixel-perfect on the client even before hydration. To enable server-side rendering, specify the defaultContainerWidth prop. Otherwise, React Photo Album produces an empty markup on the server and renders on the client only after hydration. Please note that unless your photo album is of constant width that always matches the defaultContainerWidth value, you will most likely see a layout shift immediately after hydration. Alternatively, you can provide a fallback skeleton in the skeleton prop that will be rendered in SSR and swapped with the actual photo album markup after hydration. Please also refer to the Server-Side Rendering documentation for a comprehensive list of available solutions.

Credits

Thanks to Sandra G (aka neptunian) for authoring the original react-photo-gallery library that served as inspiration and foundation for react-photo-album.