Angular efficiently using trackBy with ngFor

Question

In Angular, is the trackBy function necessary for *ngFor? I saw a few articles here, here, here, and here that say using trackBy will improve performance and has better memory management. But I was wondering if trackBy is such an improvement, then why isn't it default behavior? Is it default behavior and everything I am looking at is out of date?

If it isn't default behavior, my project has about 90 *ngFor in 90 components and I was wondering if there was a way to use the trackBy where I am not including the following function 90 times. I also want to avoid adding a service and importing that 90 times.

HTML

<mat-option *ngFor="let l of list; trackBy: trackByFn" [value]="l.id">
   {{l.name}}
</mat-option>

TS

trackByFn(index, item) {
    return index
}

Answer 1

Give it a class for test

export class Item {
  id: number;
  name: string;
}

And add a directive to monitor its init and destory

@Directive({selector: '[appMonitor]'})
export class MonitorDirective implements OnInit, OnDestroy {


  ngOnInit(): void {
    console.log('init');
  }

  ngOnDestroy(): void {
    console.log('destroy');
  }
}

Init an arrary

  itemArray: Item[] = [
    {id: 1, name: 'Tom'},
    {id: 2, name: 'Joe'},
    {id: 3, name: 'KK'}
  ];

Two functions to change the array content

  allFoo(): void {
    this.itemArray = [
      {id: 1, name: 'Tom_foo'},
      {id: 2, name: 'Joe_foo'},
      {id: 3, name: 'KK_foo'}
    ];
  }

  allBar(): void {
    this.itemArray = [
      {id: 1, name: 'Tom_bar'},
      {id: 2, name: 'Joe_bar'},
      {id: 3, name: 'KK_bar'}
    ];
  }

The preparation is done,so far so good. First of all let's test without trackBy

  <div *ngFor="let item of itemArray " appMonitor>
    Id: {{item.id}} Name:{{item.name}}
  </div>

Clearlly every time you change the array angular has recreate component accordingly.Let's try trackBy this time:

<div *ngFor="let item of itemArray ;trackBy:identify" appMonitor>
  Id: {{item.id}} Name:{{item.name}}
</div>

Identity:

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

The component is being resued.So we can conclude that using trackBy can save the work from creating same component in hmtl.

Answer 2

I have created an animation which shows how both ngFor and ngFor with trackBy manipulates DOM side by side.

read article here: https://link.medium.com/ckBRk9wrinb

Answer 3

An optimized solution:

Problem: Rendering views is an expensive task of O(n) list

---

Solution: we are typically rolling the viewport on scrolls which involves removing and adding with the same number of views. rather than deleting the views and creating them all again, we recycle them. So we detach the views, remove the context, and cache them so we can attach them and re-context them on the add cycle. Therefore saving a considerable number of script/render cycles. (In android it's called recycler view)

here is are few angular library that does that exactly as mentioned, better performance than trackBy function

1. https://material.angular.io/cdk/scrolling/overview

2. https://github.com/rintoj/ngx-virtual-scroller(this lib is no longer maintained and does not work with latest angular versions but if you still wanted to use copy-paste to your source and import in your module)

3. https://github.com/anagram4wander/ng-vfor-lib