Posts Loading

[noushinquazi]

Only load certain posts at a time-- recommended strategy is to keep track of what chunk of posts are currently loaded on frontend and ask the backend for x new posts when the user scrolls to the bottom of the currently loaded chunk.

[noushinquazi]

goal: when user scrolls to bottom of post list, there is a trigger that leads to the app asking for x more posts. the app waits for these x posts to be added to the list before letting the user scroll further.

design choices to consider:

• should there be an explicit "load more" button or should loading more posts be triggered implicitly ie. when the user hits the bottom of the posts.
• how will the app keep track of what are the next posts it needs?
  for example, imagine user A wants to load more posts but user B creates a post just as user A asks for more posts. Should user A's app update the previously loaded posts so that this new post shows up? or should user A's app only fetch the next N posts? ask me questions if this scenario is not clear
  alternatively, when loading the next n posts, you can simply fetch the current m + the next n posts. for example, if the first 10 posts are loaded, fetching the next 10 means getting 20 posts back (10 old + 10 new) and merely replacing the post list with this list of 20. where might this lead to a frictional user experience?

where to look in the code:

• consider modifying the post store to have a function that takes a number, queries the backend for that number of posts
• consider having an index that tracks how many posts are loaded
• use fetchPosts() as an example.

[parkermg]

Might need to adapt some components to PureComponent (like PostData, Post) to prevent FlatList from rerendering nonchanging components.

[noushinquazi]

Check which components within the post component are rerendering by console logging inside their render funcs. Either way, mobx will not allow pure components to be observers.