react-beautiful-dnd

Beautiful and accessible drag and drop for lists with React

Examples 🎉

See how beautiful it is for yourself!

Viewing on a desktop

All the examples!

Viewing on a mobile or tablet

• Simple list
• Board - best viewed in landscape

We provide different links for touch devices as currently storybook does not have a good mobile menu experience more information

Basic usage examples

We have created some basic examples on codesandbox for you to play with directly:

• Simple vertical list
• Simple horizontal list
• Simple DnD between two lists

Core characteristics

• Beautiful, natural movement of items
• Clean and powerful api which is simple to get started with
• Plays extremely well with standard browser interactions
• Unopinionated styling
• No creation of additional wrapper dom nodes - flexbox and focus management friendly!
• Accessible: powerful keyboard and screen reader support ♿️🚀

Get started 🤩

We have created a free course on egghead.io to help people get started with react-beautiful-dnd as quickly as possible

@alexandereardon has spoken on React podcast about the foundational ideas and goals of react-beautiful-dnd

Read this in other languages

• 한글/Korean

• 中文/Chinese

Currently supported feature set

• Vertical lists ↕
• Horizontal lists ↔
• Movement between lists (▤ ↔ ▤)
• Combining items (see combining guide)
• Mouse 🐭, keyboard 🎹 and touch 👉📱 (mobile, tablet and so on) support
• Multi drag support
• Incredible screen reader support - we provide an amazing experience for english screen readers out of the box 📦. We also provide complete customisation control and internationalisation support for those who need it 💖
• Conditional dragging and dropping
• Multiple independent lists on the one page
• Flexible item sizes - the draggable items can have different heights (vertical lists) or widths (horizontal lists)
• Add and remove Draggables during a drag (see changes while dragging guide)
• Compatible with semantic table reordering - table pattern
• Auto scrolling - automatically scroll containers and the window as required during a drag (even with keyboard 🔥)
• Custom drag handles - you can drag a whole item by just a part of it
• Compatible with ReactDOM.createPortal - portal pattern
• 🌲 Tree support through the @atlaskit/tree package
• A Droppable list can be a scroll container (without a scrollable parent) or be the child of a scroll container (that also does not have a scrollable parent)
• Independent nested lists - a list can be a child of another list, but you cannot drag items from the parent list into a child list
• Server side rendering compatible
• Plays well with nested interactive elements by default

Lots more coming soon

You can check out all the features that will be landing soon on our issue page.

Upgrading

We have created upgrade instructions in our release notes to help you upgrade to the latest version!

• Upgrading from 9.x to 10.x
• Upgrading from 8.x to 9.x
• Upgrading from 7.x to 8.x
• Upgrading from 6.x to 7.x
• Upgrading from 5.x to 6.x
• Upgrading from 4.x to 5.x
• Upgrading from 3.x to 4.x

Not for everyone

There are a lot of libraries out there that allow for drag and drop interactions within React. Most notable of these is the amazing react-dnd. It does an incredible job at providing a great set of drag and drop primitives which work especially well with the wildly inconsistent html5 drag and drop feature. react-beautiful-dnd is a higher level abstraction specifically built for vertical and horizontal lists. Within that subset of functionality react-beautiful-dnd offers a powerful, natural and beautiful drag and drop experience. However, it does not provide the breadth of functionality offered by react-dnd. So this library might not be for you depending on what your use case is.

Driving philosophy: physicality

The core design idea of react-beautiful-dnd is physicality: we want users to feel like they are moving physical objects around

Application 1: no instant movement

It is a fairly standard drag and drop pattern for things to disappear and reappear in response to the users drag. For a more natural drag we animate the movement of items as they need to move out of the way while dragging to more clearly show a drags effect. We also animate the drop of an item so that it animates into its new home position. At no point is an item instantly moved anywhere — regardless of whether it is dragging or not.

Application 2: knowing when to move

It is quite common for drag and drop interactions to be based on the position that user started the drag from.

In react-beautiful-dnd a dragging items impact is based on its centre of gravity — regardless of where a user grabs an item from. A dragging items impact follows similar rules to a set of scales ⚖️. Here are some rules that are followed to allow for a natural drag experience even with items of flexible height:

• A list is dragged over when the centre position of a dragging item goes over one of the boundaries of the list
• A resting drag item will move out of the way of a dragging item when the centre position of the dragging item goes over the edge of the resting item. Put another way: once the centre position of an item (A) goes over the edge of another item (B), B moves out of the way.

Application 3: no drop shadows

Drop shadows are useful in an environment where items and their destinations snap around. However, with react-beautiful-dnd it should be obvious where things will be dropping based on the movement of items. This might be changed in the future - but the experiment is to see how far we can get without any of these affordances.

Application 4: maximise interactivity

react-beautiful-dnd works really hard to avoid as many periods of non-interactivity as possible. The user should feel like they are in control of the interface and not waiting for an animation to finish before they can continue to interact with the interface. However, there is a balance that needs to be made between correctness and power in order to make everybody's lives more sane. Here are the only situations where some things are not interactive:

1. From when a user cancels a drag to when the drop animation completes. On cancel there are lots of things moving back to where they should be. If you grab an item in a location that is not its true home then the following drag will be incorrect.
2. Starting a drag on an item that is animating its own drop. For simplicity this is the case - it is actually quite hard to grab something while it is animating home. It could be coded around - but it seems like an edge case that would add a lot of complexity.

Keep in mind that these periods of inactivity may not always exist.

Application 5: no drag axis locking

For now, the library does not support drag axis locking (aka drag rails). This is where the user is restricted to only dragging along one axis. The current thinking is this breaks the physical metaphor we are going for and sends a message to the user that they are interacting with a piece of software rather than moving physical objects around. It is possible to ensure that a user can only drop in a single list by using props type and isDropDisabled. You can also do some visual treatment to the list onDragStart to show the user that this is the only place they can interact with.

Application 6: natural cross list movement

Rather than using an index based approach for keyboard movement between lists, react-beautiful-dnd performs cross list movement based on inertia, gravity and collisions. You can find out more about how this works by reading the blog "Natural keyboard movement between lists".

Carefully designed animations

With things moving a lot it would be easy for the user to become distracted by the animations or for them to get in the way. We have tweaked the various animations to ensure the right balance of guidance, performance and interactivity.

Dropping

We have designed a drop animation that feels weighted and physical. It is based on a spring and uses a CSS animation with a dynamic duration to achieve the effect.

Animation curve used when dropping. Duration is dynamic based on distance to travel

You can tweak the drop animation if you would like to. We have created a guide: drop animation

Moving out of the way

Items that are moving out of the way of a dragging item do so with a CSS transition rather than physics. This is to maximise performance by allowing the GPU to handle the movement. The CSS animation curve has been designed to communicate getting out of the way.

How it is composed:

1. A warm up period to mimic a natural response time
2. A small phase to quickly move out of the way
3. A long tail so that people can read any text that is being animated in the second half of the animation

Animation curve used when moving out of the way

Caring about the interaction details

Focus management

react-beautiful-dnd does not create any wrapper elements. This means that it will not impact the usual tab flow of a document. For example, if you are wrapping an anchor tag then the user will tab to the anchor directly and not an element surrounding the anchor. Whatever element you wrap will be given a tab-index to ensure that users can tab to the element to perform keyboard dragging.

Auto scrolling

When a user drags a Draggable near the edge of a container we automatically scroll the container as we are able to in order make room for the Draggable.

A container is either a Droppable that is scrollable or has a scroll parent - or the window.

Mouse and touch	Keyboard

It also works in multi list configurations with all input types

Mouse and touch	Keyboard

For mouse and touch inputs 🐭📱

When the center of a Draggable gets within a small distance from the edge of a container we start auto scrolling. As the user gets closer to the edge of the container we increase the speed of the auto scroll. This acceleration uses an easing function to exponentially increase the rate of acceleration the closer we move towards the edge. We reach a maximum rate of acceleration a small distance from the true edge of a container so that the user does not need to be extremely precise to obtain the maximum scroll speed. This logic applies for any edge that is scrollable.

The distances required for auto scrolling are based on a percentage of the height or width of the container for vertical and horizontal scrolling respectively. By using percentages rather than raw pixel values we are able to have a great experience regardless of the size and shape of your containers.

Mouse wheel and trackpads

In addition to auto scrolling we also allow users to scroll the window or a Droppable manually using their mouse wheel or trackpad 👌

A note about big Draggables

If the Draggable is bigger than a container on the axis you are trying to scroll - we will not permit scrolling on that axis. For example, if you have a Draggable that is longer than the height of the window we will not auto scroll vertically. However, we will still permit scrolling to occur horizontally.

iOS auto scroll shake 📱🤕

When auto scrolling on an iOS browser (webkit) the Draggable noticeably shakes. This is due to a bug with webkit that has no known work around. We tried for a long time to work around the issue! If you are interesting in seeing this improved please engage with the webkit issue.

For keyboard dragging 🎹

We also correctly update the scroll position as required when keyboard dragging. In order to move a Draggable into the correct position we can do a combination of a Droppable scroll, window scroll and manual movements to ensure the Draggable ends up in the correct position in response to user movement instructions. This is boss 🔥.

This is amazing for users with visual impairments as they can correctly move items around in big lists without needing to use mouse positioning.

Accessibility

Traditionally drag and drop interactions have been exclusively a mouse or touch interaction. This library ships with support for drag and drop interactions using only a keyboard. This enables power users to drive their experience entirely from the keyboard. As well as opening up these experiences to users who would have been excluded previously.

We provide fantastic support for screen readers to assist users with visual (or other) impairments. We ship with english messaging out of the box 📦. However, you are welcome to override these messages by using the announce function that it provided to all of the DragDropContext > responder functions.

See our screen reader guide for a guide on crafting useful screen reader messaging.

Example screen reader behaviour

Mouse dragging

Sloppy clicks and click prevention 🐱🎁

When a user presses the mouse down on an element, we cannot determine if the user was clicking or dragging. Also, sometimes when a user clicks they can move the cursor slightly — a sloppy click. So we only start a drag once the user has moved beyond a certain distance with the mouse down (the drag threshold) — more than they would if they were just making a sloppy click. If the drag threshold is not exceeded then the user interaction behaves just like a regular click. If the drag threshold is exceeded then the interaction will be classified as a drag and the standard click behaviour will not occur.

This allows consumers to wrap interactive elements such as an anchor and have it be both a standard anchor as well as a draggable item in a natural way.

(🐱🎁 is a schrodinger's cat joke)

To see more in depth information about how we impact standard browser events see our how we use DOM events guide

Keyboard shortcuts: mouse dragging

When a drag is not occurring react-beautiful-dnd does not impact any of the standard keyboard interactions (it has no listeners bound).

When a drag is occurring with a mouse the user is able to execute the following keyboard shortcuts:

• escape esc - cancel the drag

During a mouse drag the following standard keyboard events are prevented to prevent a bad experience:

• tab tab ↹ - preventing tabbing
• enter ⏎ - preventing submission

Other than these explicitly prevented keyboard events all standard keyboard events should work as expected.

Keyboard dragging

react-beautiful-dnd supports dragging with only a keyboard. We have audited how our keyboard shortcuts interact with standard browser keyboard interactions. When the user is not dragging they can use their keyboard as they normally would. While dragging we override and disable certain browser shortcuts (such as tab) to ensure a fluid experience for the user.

To see more indepth information about how we impact standard browser events see our how we use DOM events guide

Keyboard shortcuts: keyboard dragging

When a drag is not occurring, the user will be able to navigate through the Draggable's on a page using the standard tab tab ↹ key to move forward through the tabbable elements and (shift + tab) (shift + )tab ↹) to move backwards. We achieve this by adding a tab-index to the Draggable. When a Draggable has focus the spacebar space will lift a Draggable. This will start the drag.

Once a drag is started the following keyboard shortcuts can be used:

• spacebar space - drop the Draggable
• escape esc - cancel the drag

The following commands are also available but they depend on the type of Droppable that the Draggable is currently in:

Within a vertical list

• Up arrow ↑ - move a Draggable upwards in a Droppable
• Down arrow ↓ - move a Draggable downwards in a Droppable
• Right arrow → - move a Draggable to a Droppable to the right of the current Droppable (move to new list)
• Left arrow ← - move a Draggable to a Droppable to the left of the current Droppable (move to new list)

Within a horizontal list

• Up arrow ↑ - move a Draggable to a Droppable to above the current Droppable (move to new list)
• Down arrow ↓ - move a Draggable to a Droppable to below the current Droppable (move to new list)
• Right arrow → - move a Draggable to the right in the current Droppable
• Left arrow ← - move a Draggable to the left in the current Droppable

During a drag the following standard keyboard events have their default behaviour prevented (through event.preventDefault()) to avoid a bad experience:

• tab tab ↹ - preventing tabbing
• enter ⏎ - preventing submission

Touch dragging

react-beautiful-dnd supports dragging on touch devices such as mobiles and tablets.

Recorded on iPhone 6s

Understanding intention: tap, force press, scroll and drag

When a user presses their finger (or other input) on a Draggable we are not sure if they where intending to tap, force press, scroll the container or drag. As much as possible react-beautiful-dnd aims to ensure that a users default interaction experience remains unaffected.

To see more indepth information about how we impact standard browser events see our how we use DOM events guide

Starting a drag: long press

A user can start a drag by holding their finger 👇 on an element for a small period of time 🕑 (long press)

Tap support

If the user lifts their finger before the timer is finished then we release the event to the browser for it to determine whether to perform the standard tap / click action. This allows you to have a Draggable that is both clickable such as a anchor as well as draggable. If the item was dragged then we block the tap action from occurring.

Native scrolling support

If we detect a touchmove before the long press timer expires we cancel the pending drag and allow the user to scroll normally. This means that the user needs to be fairly intentional and precise with their grabbing. Once the first touchmove occurs we have to either opt in or out of native scrolling.

• If the long press timer has not expired: allow native scrolling and prevent dragging
• If the long press timer has expired: a drag has started and we prevent native scrolling

Force press support

Safari only

If the user force presses on the element before they have moved the element (even if a drag has already started) then the drag is cancelled and the standard force press action occurs. For an anchor this is a website preview.

Vibration

This is merely an idea - it is up to you to add this if you want this behavior.

If you like you could also trigger a vibration event when the user picks up a Draggable. This can provide tactile feedback that the user is doing something. It currently is only supported in Chrome on Android.

class App extends React.Component {
  onDragStart = () => {
    // good times
    if (window.navigator.vibrate) {
      window.navigator.vibrate(100);
    }
  };
  /*...*/
}

Multi drag

We have created a multi drag pattern that you can build on top of react-beautiful-dnd in order to support dragging multiple Draggable items at once.

Preset styles

We apply a number of non-visible styles to facilitate the dragging experience. We have a guide describing what they are and how they are applied in the various stages of a drag interaction: guide: preset styles;

Installation

Package manager

# yarn
yarn add react-beautiful-dnd

# npm
npm install react-beautiful-dnd --save

Distribution bundle

A universal module definition bundle is published on npm under the /dist folder for consumption . We publish the following files:

• dist/react-beautiful-dnd.js
• dist/react-beautiful-dnd.min.js (minified bundle)

These bundles list react as an external which needs to be provided. This is done to reduce the size of the bundle and prevent consumers from loading react multiple times. You can provide react through your module system or simply by having react on the window.

You can use the UMD to run react-beautiful-dnd directly in the browser.

<!-- peer dependency -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<!-- lib (change x.x.x for the version you would like) -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/react-beautiful-dnd.js"></script>
<!-- needed to mount your react app -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>

<script>
  const React = window.React;
  const ReactDOM = window.ReactDOM;
  const { DragDropContext, Draggable, Droppable } = window.ReactBeautifulDnd;

  class App extends React.Component {
    //...
  }

  // You can use JSX if your environment supports it
  ReactDOM.render(React.createElement(App), document.getElementById('app'));
</script>

There is also an example codepen you can use to play with this installation method.

ClojureScript

You can consume react-beautiful-dnd from within ClojureScript using CLJSJS!

API

Okay, into the fun stuff - so how do you use the library?

DragDropContext

In order to use drag and drop, you need to have the part of your React tree that you want to be able to use drag and drop in wrapped in a DragDropContext. It is advised to just wrap your entire application in a DragDropContext. Having nested DragDropContext's is not supported. You will be able to achieve your desired conditional dragging and dropping using the props of Droppable and Draggable. You can think of DragDropContext as having a similar purpose to the react-redux Provider component

Props

type Responders = {|
  // optional
  onBeforeDragStart?: OnBeforeDragStartResponder,
  onDragStart?: OnDragStartResponder,
  onDragUpdate?: OnDragUpdateResponder,
  // required
  onDragEnd: OnDragEndResponder,
|};

import type { Node } from 'react';

type Props = {|
  ...Responders,
  children: ?Node,
|};

See our type guide for more details

Basic usage

import { DragDropContext } from 'react-beautiful-dnd';

class App extends React.Component {
  onBeforeDragStart = () => {
    /*...*/
  };

  onDragStart = () => {
    /*...*/
  };
  onDragUpdate = () => {
    /*...*/
  };
  onDragEnd = () => {
    // the only one that is required
  };

  render() {
    return (
      <DragDropContext
        onBeforeDragStart={this.onBeforeDragStart}
        onDragStart={this.onDragStart}
        onDragUpdate={this.onDragUpdate}
        onDragEnd={this.onDragEnd}
      >
        <div>Hello world</div>
      </DragDropContext>
    );
  }
}

Responders

Responders were previously known as Hooks

Responders are top level application events that you can use to perform your own state updates, style updates, as well as to make screen reader announcements.

Please see our Responders guide for detailed information about responders ❤️

Droppable

Droppable components can be dropped on by a Draggable. They also contain Draggables. A Draggable must be contained within a Droppable.

import { Droppable } from 'react-beautiful-dnd';

<Droppable droppableId="droppable-1" type="PERSON">
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div
      ref={provided.innerRef}
      style={{ backgroundColor: snapshot.isDraggingOver ? 'blue' : 'grey' }}
      {...provided.droppableProps}
    >
      <h2>I am a droppable!</h2>
      {provided.placeholder}
    </div>
  )}
</Droppable>;

Droppable props

import type { Node } from 'react';

type Props = {|
  // required
  droppableId: DroppableId,
  // optional
  type?: TypeId,
  isDropDisabled?: boolean,
  isCombineEnabled?: boolean,
  direction?: Direction,
  ignoreContainerClipping?: boolean,
  children: (Provided, StateSnapshot) => Node,
|};

Required props

react-beautiful-dnd will throw an error if a required prop is not provided

• droppableId: A required DroppableId(string). See our identifiers guide for more information.

Optional props

• type: A TypeId(string) that can be used to simply accept only the specified class of Draggable. Draggables always inherit type from the Droppable they are defined in. For example, if you use the type PERSON then it will only allow Draggables of type PERSON to be dropped on itself. Draggables of type TASK would not be able to be dropped on a Droppable with type PERSON. If no type is provided, it will be set to 'DEFAULT'.
• isDropDisabled: A flag to control whether or not dropping is currently allowed on the Droppable. You can use this to implement your own conditional dropping logic. It will default to false.
• isCombineEnabled: A flag to control whether or not all the Draggables in the list will be able to be combined with. It will default to false.
• direction: The direction in which items flow in this droppable. Options are vertical (default) and horizontal.
• ignoreContainerClipping: When a Droppable is inside a scrollable container its area is constrained so that you can only drop on the part of the Droppable that you can see. Setting this prop opts out of this behavior, allowing you to drop anywhere on a Droppable even if it's visually hidden by a scrollable parent. The default behavior is suitable for most cases so odds are you'll never need to use this prop, but it can be useful if you've got very long Draggables inside a short scroll container. Keep in mind that it might cause some unexpected behavior if you have multiple Droppables inside scroll containers on the same page.

Children function

The React children of a Droppable must be a function that returns a ReactElement.

<Droppable droppableId="droppable-1">
  {(provided, snapshot) => ({
    /*...*/
  })}
</Droppable>

The function is provided with two arguments:

1. provided: (DroppableProvided)

type DroppableProvided = {|
  innerRef: (?HTMLElement) => void,
  droppableProps: DroppableProps,
  placeholder: ?ReactElement,
|};

type DroppableProps = {|
  // used for shared global styles
  'data-react-beautiful-dnd-droppable': string,
|};

• provided.innerRef: In order for the droppable to function correctly, you must bind the provided.innerRef to the highest possible DOM node in the ReactElement. We do this in order to avoid needing to use ReactDOM to look up your DOM node.

For more information on using innerRef see our using innerRef guide

• provided.placeholder: This is used to create space in the Droppable as needed during a drag. This space is needed when a user is dragging over a list that is not the home list. Please be sure to put the placeholder inside of the component for which you have provided the ref. We need to increase the size of the Droppable itself.
• provided.droppableProps (DroppableProps): This is an Object that contains properties that need to be applied to a Droppable element. It needs to be applied to the same element that you apply provided.innerRef to. It currently contains a data attribute that we use to control some non-visible css.

<Droppable droppableId="droppable-1">
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div ref={provided.innerRef} {...provided.droppableProps}>
      Good to go
      {provided.placeholder}
    </div>
  )}
</Droppable>

2. snapshot: (DroppableStateSnapshot)

type DroppableStateSnapshot = {|
  // Is the Droppable being dragged over?
  isDraggingOver: boolean,
  // What is the id of the draggable that is dragging over the Droppable?
  draggingOverWith: ?DraggableId,
|};

The children function is also provided with a small amount of state relating to the current drag state. This can be optionally used to enhance your component. A common use case is changing the appearance of a Droppable while it is being dragged over.

<Droppable droppableId="droppable-1">
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div
      ref={provided.innerRef}
      style={{ backgroundColor: snapshot.isDraggingOver ? 'blue' : 'grey' }}
      {...provided.droppableProps}
    >
      I am a droppable!
      {provided.placeholder}
    </div>
  )}
</Droppable>

Conditionally dropping

• Droppables can only be dropped on by Draggables who share the same type. This is a simple way of allowing conditional dropping. If you do not provide a type for the Droppable, then it will only accept Draggables which also have the default type. Draggables and Droppables both will have their types set to 'DEFAULT' when none is provided. There is currently no way to set multiple types, or a type wildcard that will accept Draggables of multiple any types. This could be added if there is a valid use case.
• Using the isDropDisabled prop you can conditionally allow dropping. This allows you to do arbitrarily complex conditional transitions. This will only be considered if the type of the Droppable matches the type of the currently dragging Draggable.
• You can disable dropping on a Droppable altogether by always setting isDropDisabled to true. You can do this to create a list that is never able to be dropped on, but contains Draggables.
• Technically you do not need to use type and do all of your conditional drop logic with the isDropDisabled function. The type parameter is a convenient shortcut for a common use case.

Combining

react-beautiful-dnd supports the combining of Draggables 🤩

You can enable a combining mode for a Droppable by setting isCombineEnabled to true on a Droppable. We have created a combining guide to help you implement combining in your lists.

Adding and removing Draggables while dragging

It is possible to change the Draggables in a Droppable for a limited set of circumstances. We have created a comprehensive changes while dragging guide

Scroll containers

This library supports dragging within scroll containers (DOM elements that have overflow: auto; or overflow: scroll;). The only supported use cases are:

1. The Droppable can itself be a scroll container with no scrollable parents
2. The Droppable has one scrollable parent

where a scrollable parent refers to a scroll container that is not the window itself.

For more information see how we detect scroll containers guide

We currently only support a single scroll parent. We plan on adding support for nested scroll containers

Empty Droppables

It is recommended that you put a min-height on a vertical Droppable or a min-width on a horizontal Droppable. Otherwise when the Droppable is empty there may not be enough of a target for Draggable being dragged with touch or mouse inputs to be over the Droppable.

Fixed Droppables

react-beautiful-dnd has partial support for Droppable lists that use position: fixed. When you start a drag and any list of the same type is position:fixed then auto window scrolling will be disabled. This is because our virtual model assumes that when the page scroll changes the position of a Droppable will shift too. If a manual window scroll is detected then the scroll will be aborted. Scroll container scroll is still allowed. We could improve this support, but it would just be a big effort. Please raise an issue if you would be keen to be a part of this effort ❤️

Recommended Droppable performance optimisation

📺 This optimisation is covered in a free lesson of our getting started course

When a user drags over, or stops dragging over, a Droppable we re-render the Droppable with an updated DroppableStateSnapshot > isDraggingOver value. This is useful for styling the Droppable. However, by default this will cause a render of all of the children of the Droppable - which might be 100's of Draggables! This can result in a noticeable frame rate drop. To avoid this problem we recommend that you create a component that is the child of a Droppable who's responsibility it is to avoid rendering children if it is not required.

Here is an example of how you could do this:

import React, { Component } from 'react';

class Student extends Component<{ student: Person }> {
  render() {
    // Renders out a draggable student
  }
}

class InnerList extends Component<{ students: Person[] }> {
  // do not re-render if the students list has not changed
  shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps: Props) {
    if (this.props.students === nextProps.students) {
      return false;
    }
    return true;
  }
  // You could also not do your own shouldComponentUpdate check and just
  // extend from React.PureComponent

  render() {
    return this.props.students.map((student: Person) => (
      <Student student={student} />
    ));
  }
}

class Students extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <Droppable droppableId="list">
        {(provided: DroppableProvided, snapshot: DroppableStateSnapshot) => (
          <div
            ref={provided.innerRef}
            style={{
              backgroundColor: provided.isDragging ? 'green' : 'lightblue',
            }}
            {...provided.droppableProps}
          >
            <InnerList students={this.props.students} />
            {provided.placeholder}
          </div>
        )}
      </Droppable>
    );
  }
}

By using the approach you are able to make style changes to a Droppable when it is being dragged over, but you avoid re-rendering all of the children unnecessarily. Keep in mind that if you are using React.PureComponent that your component will not respond to changes in the context with the legacy context API.

When moving into a new list, the visible Draggables will have their render function called directly even with this optimisation. This is because we need to move those Draggables out of the way. The InnerList optimisation will prevent the Droppable from calling render on the whole list from the top down. This optimisation will prevent the non-visible Draggables from having their render function called.

Unfortunately we are unable to apply this optimisation for you. It is a byproduct of using the render-props pattern.

Draggable

Draggable components can be dragged around and dropped onto Droppables. A Draggable must always be contained within a Droppable. It is possible to reorder a Draggable within its home Droppable or move to another Droppable. It is possible because a Droppable is free to control what it allows to be dropped on it.

Every Draggable has a drag handle. A drag handle is the element that the user interacts with in order to drag a Draggable. A drag handle can be the Draggable element itself, or a child of the Draggable. Note that by default a drag handle cannot be an interactive element, since event handlers are blocked on nested interactive elements. Proper semantics for accessibility are added to the drag handle element. If you wish to use an interactive element, disableInteractiveElementBlocking must be set.

import { Draggable } from 'react-beautiful-dnd';

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div
      ref={provided.innerRef}
      {...provided.draggableProps}
      {...provided.dragHandleProps}
    >
      <h4>My draggable</h4>
    </div>
  )}
</Draggable>;

Draggable Props

import type { Node } from 'react';

type Props = {|
  // required
  draggableId: DraggableId,
  index: number,
  children: (DraggableProvided, DraggableStateSnapshot) => Node,
  // optional
  isDragDisabled: ?boolean,
  disableInteractiveElementBlocking: ?boolean,
|};

Required props

react-beautiful-dnd will throw an error if a required prop is not provided

• draggableId: A required DraggableId(string). See our identifiers guide for more information.
• index: A required number that matches the order of the Draggable in the Droppable. It is simply the index of the Draggable in the list. The index needs to be unique within a Droppable but does not need to be unique between Droppables. The indexs in a list must start from 0 and be consecutive. [0, 1, 2] and not [1, 2, 8]. Typically the index value will simply be the index provided by a Array.prototype.map function:

{
  this.props.items.map((item, index) => (
    <Draggable draggableId={item.id} index={index}>
      {(provided, snapshot) => (
        <div
          ref={provided.innerRef}
          {...provided.draggableProps}
          {...provided.dragHandleProps}
        >
          {item.content}
        </div>
      )}
    </Draggable>
  ));
}

Optional props

• isDragDisabled: A flag to control whether or not the Draggable is permitted to drag. You can use this to implement your own conditional drag logic. It will default to false.
• disableInteractiveElementBlocking: A flag to opt out of blocking a drag from interactive elements. For more information refer to the section Interactive child elements within a Draggable

Children function (render props / function as child)

The React children of a Draggable must be a function that returns a ReactNode.

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div
      ref={provided.innerRef}
      {...provided.draggableProps}
      {...provided.dragHandleProps}
    >
      Drag me!
    </div>
  )}
</Draggable>

The function is provided with two arguments:

1. provided: (DraggableProvided)

type DraggableProvided = {|
  innerRef: HTMLElement => void,
  draggableProps: DraggableProps,
  // will be null if the draggable is disabled
  dragHandleProps: ?DragHandleProps,
|};

For more type information please see our types guide.

Everything within the provided object must be applied for the Draggable to function correctly.

• provided.innerRef (innerRef: (HTMLElement) => void): In order for the Draggable to function correctly, you must bind the innerRef function to the ReactElement that you want to be considered the Draggable node. We do this in order to avoid needing to use ReactDOM to look up your DOM node.

For more information on using innerRef see our using innerRef guide

innerRef Example

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => <div ref={provided.innerRef}>Drag me!</div>}
</Draggable>

• provided.draggableProps (DraggableProps): This is an Object that contains a data attribute and an inline style. This Object needs to be applied to the same node that you apply provided.innerRef to. This controls the movement of the draggable when it is dragging and not dragging. You are welcome to add your own styles to DraggableProps.style – but please do not remove or replace any of the properties.

draggableProps type information

// Props that can be spread onto the element directly
export type DraggableProps = {|
  // inline style
  style: ?DraggableStyle,
  // used for shared global styles
  'data-react-beautiful-dnd-draggable': string,
|};

For more type information please see our types guide.

draggableProps Example

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div ref={provided.innerRef} {...provided.draggableProps}>
      Drag me!
    </div>
  )}
</Draggable>

Positioning ownership

It is a contract of this library that it owns the positioning logic of the dragging element. This includes properties such as top, right, bottom, left and transform. The library may change how it positions things and which properties it uses without performing a major version bump. It is also recommended that you do not apply your own transition property to the dragging element.

Warning: position: fixed

react-beautiful-dnd uses position: fixed to position the dragging element. This is quite robust and allows for you to have position: relative | absolute | fixed parents. However, unfortunately position:fixed is impacted by transform (such as transform: rotate(10deg);). This means that if you have a transform: * on one of the parents of a Draggable then the positioning logic will be incorrect while dragging. Lame! For most consumers this will not be an issue.

To get around this you can use React.Portal. We do not enable this functionality by default as it has performance problems. We have a using a portal guide explaining the performance problem in more detail and how you can set up your own React.Portal if you want to.

Focus retention when moving between lists

When moving a Draggable from one list to another the default browser behaviour is for the drag handle element to lose focus. This is because the old element is being destroyed and a new one is being created. The loss of focus is not good when dragging with a keyboard as the user is then unable to continue to interact with the element. To improve this user experience we automatically give a drag handle focus when:

• It was unmounted at the end of a drag
• It had focus
• It is enabled when mounted
• No other elements have gained browser focus before the drag handle has mounted

Extending DraggableProps.style

If you are using inline styles you are welcome to extend the DraggableProps.style object. You are also welcome to apply the DraggableProps.style object using inline styles and use your own styling solution for the component itself - such as styled-components.

If you are overriding inline styles be sure to do it after you spread the provided.draggableProps or the spread will override your inline style.

<Draggable draggable="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => {
    // extending the DraggableStyle with our own inline styles
    const style = {
      backgroundColor: snapshot.isDragging ? 'blue' : 'white',
      fontSize: 18,
      ...provided.draggableProps.style,
    };
    return (
      <div ref={provided.innerRef} {...provided.draggableProps} style={style}>
        Drag me!
      </div>
    );
  }}
</Draggable>

Unsupported margin setups

Avoid margin collapsing between Draggables. margin collapsing is one of those really hard parts of CSS. For our purposes, if you have one Draggable with a margin-bottom: 10px and the next Draggable has a margin-top: 12px these margins will collapse and the resulting space between the elements will be the greater of the two: 12px. When we do our calculations we are currently not accounting for margin collapsing. If you do want to have a margin on the siblings, wrap them both in a div and apply the margin to the inner div so they are not direct siblings.

Draggables should be visible siblings

It is an assumption that Draggables are visible siblings of one another. There can be other elements in between, but these elements should not take up any additional space. You probably will not do this anyway, but just calling it out to be super clear.

// Direct siblings ✅
<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {() => {}}
</Draggable>
<Draggable draggableId="draggable-2" index={1}>
  {() => {}}
</Draggable>

// Not direct siblings, but are visible siblings ✅
<div>
  <Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
    {() => {}}
  </Draggable>
</div>
<div>
  <Draggable draggableId="draggable-2" index={1}>
    {() => {}}
  </Draggable>
</div>

// Spacer elements ❌
<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
    {() => {}}
</Draggable>
<p>I will break things!</p>
<Draggable draggableId="draggable-2" index={1}>
    {() => {}}
</Draggable>

// Spacing on non sibling wrappers ❌
<div style={{padding: 10}}>
  <Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
    {() => {}}
  </Draggable>
</div>
<div style={{padding: 10}}>
  <Draggable draggableId="draggable-2" index={1}>
    {() => {}}
  </Draggable>
</div>

• provided.dragHandleProps (?DragHandleProps) every Draggable has a drag handle. This is what is used to drag the whole Draggable. Often this will be the same node as the Draggable, but sometimes it can be a child of the Draggable. DragHandleProps need to be applied to the node that you want to be the drag handle. This is a number of props that need to be applied to the Draggable node. The simplest approach is to spread the props onto the draggable node ({...provided.dragHandleProps}). However, you are also welcome to monkey patch these props if you also need to respond to them. DragHandleProps will be null when isDragDisabled is set to true.

dragHandleProps Type information

type DragHandleProps = {|
  onFocus: () => void,
  onBlur: () => void,
  onMouseDown: (event: MouseEvent) => void,
  onKeyDown: (event: KeyboardEvent) => void,
  onTouchStart: (event: TouchEvent) => void,
  'data-react-beautiful-dnd-drag-handle': string,
  'aria-roledescription': string,
  tabIndex: number,
  draggable: boolean,
  onDragStart: (event: DragEvent) => void,
|};

dragHandleProps Example: standard

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div
      ref={provided.innerRef}
      {...provided.draggableProps}
      {...provided.dragHandleProps}
    >
      Drag me!
    </div>
  )}
</Draggable>

dragHandleProps example: custom drag handle

Controlling a whole draggable by just a part of it

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => (
    <div ref={provided.innerRef} {...provided.draggableProps}>
      <h2>Hello there</h2>
      <div {...provided.dragHandleProps}>Drag handle</div>
    </div>
  )}
</Draggable>

dragHandleProps monkey patching

You can override some of the dragHandleProps props with your own behavior if you need to.

const myOnMouseDown = event => console.log('mouse down on', event.target);

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => {
    const onMouseDown = (() => {
      // dragHandleProps might be null
      if (!provided.dragHandleProps) {
        return onMouseDown;
      }

      // creating a new onMouseDown function that calls myOnMouseDown as well as the drag handle one.
      return event => {
        provided.dragHandleProps.onMouseDown(event);
        myOnMouseDown(event);
      };
    })();

    return (
      <div
        ref={provided.innerRef}
        {...provided.draggableProps}
        {...provided.dragHandleProps}
        onMouseDown={onMouseDown}
      >
        Drag me!
      </div>
    );
  }}
</Draggable>;

2. Snapshot: (DraggableStateSnapshot)

type DraggableStateSnapshot = {|
  // Set to true if a Draggable is being actively dragged, or if it is drop animating
  // Both active dragging and the drop animation are considered part of the drag
  // *Generally this is the only property you will be using*
  isDragging: boolean,
  // Set to true if a Draggable is drop animating. Not every drag and drop interaction
  // as a drop animation. There is no drop animation when a Draggable is already in its final
  // position when dropped. This is commonly the case when dragging with a keyboard
  isDropAnimating: boolean,
  // Information about a drop animation
  dropAnimation: ?DropAnimation
  // What Droppable (if any) the Draggable is currently over
  draggingOver: ?DroppableId,
  // the id of a draggable that you are combining with
  combineWith: ?DraggableId,
  // if something else is dragging and you are a combine target, then this is the id of the item that is dragging
  combineTargetFor: ?DraggableId,
  // There are two modes that a drag can be in
  // 'FLUID': everything is done in response to highly granular input (eg mouse)
  // 'SNAP': items snap between positions (eg keyboard);
  mode: ?MovementMode,
|};

See our type guide for more details

The children function is also provided with a small amount of state relating to the current drag state. This can be optionally used to enhance your component. A common use case is changing the appearance of a Draggable while it is being dragged. Note: if you want to change the cursor to something like grab you will need to add the style to the draggable. (See Extending DraggableProps.style above)

<Draggable draggableId="draggable-1" index={0}>
  {(provided, snapshot) => {
    const style = {
      backgroundColor: snapshot.isDragging ? 'blue' : 'grey',
      ...provided.draggableProps.style,
    };

    return (
      <div
        ref={provided.innerRef}
        {...provided.draggableProps}
        {...provided.dragHandleProps}
        style={style}
      >
        Drag me!
      </div>
    );
  }}
</Draggable>

Draggable placeholder

When dragging a Draggable we leave behind a placeholder React.Element to maintain space in the Droppable in order to prevent it from collapsing. The placeholder mimics the styling and layout (including width, height, margin, tagName and display) to ensure the list dimensions remain unaffected while dragging. It will be inserted by react-beautiful-dnd as a direct sibling to the React.Node returned by the Draggable children function.

Adding an onClick handler to a Draggable or a drag handle

You are welcome to add your own onClick handler to a Draggable or a drag handle (which might be the same element). onClick events handlers will always be called if a click occurred. If we are preventing the click, then the event.defaultPrevented property will be set to true. We prevent click events from occurring when the user was dragging an item. See sloppy clicks and click prevention for more information.

Interactive child elements within a Draggable

It is possible for your Draggable to contain interactive elements. By default we block dragging on these elements. By doing this we allow those elements to function in the usual way. Here is the list of interactive elements that we block dragging from by default:

• input
• button
• textarea
• select
• option
• optgroup
• video
• audio
• contenteditable (any elements that are contenteditable or are within a contenteditable container)

You can opt out of this behavior by adding the disableInteractiveElementBlocking prop to a Draggable. However, it is questionable as to whether you should be doing so because it will render the interactive element unusable. If you need to conditionally block dragging from interactive elements you can add the disableInteractiveElementBlocking prop to opt out of the default blocking and monkey patch the dragHandleProps (DragHandleProps) event handlers to disable dragging as required.

resetServerContext

The resetServerContext function should be used when server side rendering (SSR). It ensures context state does not persist across multiple renders on the server which would result in client/server markup mismatches after multiple requests are rendered on the server.

Use it before calling the server side render method:

import { resetServerContext } from 'react-beautiful-dnd';
import { renderToString } from 'react-dom/server';

...

resetServerContext();
renderToString(...);

Use the html5 doctype

Be sure that you have specified the html5 doctype (Document Type Definition - DTD) for your html page:

<!DOCTYPE html>

A doctype impacts browser layout and measurement apis. Not specifying a doctype is a world of pain 🔥. Browsers will use some other doctype such as "Quirks mode" which can drastically change layout and measurement (more information). The html5 doctype is our only supported doctype.

For non production builds we will log a warning to the console if a html5 doctype is not found. You can disable the warning if you like.

Developer only warnings 👷‍

For common setup and usage issues and errors react-beautiful-dnd will log some information console for development builds (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production'). These logs are stripped from productions builds to save kbs and to keep the console clean.

How to drop the developer messages from your bundles:

• React docs
• webpack instructions
• rollup instructions

Disable warnings

If you want to disable the warnings in development, you just need to update a flag:

// disable all react-beautiful-dnd development warnings
window['__react-beautiful-dnd-disable-dev-warnings'] = true;

Disabling the warnings will not stop a drag from being aborted in the case of an error. It only disabling the logging about it.

Flow and TypeScript usage

Please see our types guide

Community ❤️👋

• kanban-dnd - A Kanban style to-do list, with the ability to create custom lanes and reorder them on the fly. - Simple Trello - A simple cloning version of Trello, using React ecosystem.
  • Demo
  • Source
• 🎮 A drag'n'drop Checkers game
  • Demo
  • Source

Addons

• natural-drag-animation-rbdnd adds natural dragging animation

Engineering health

Typed

This codebase is typed with flowtype to promote greater internal consistency and more resilient code.

Tested

This code base employs a number of different testing strategies including unit, performance and integration tests. Testing various aspects of the system helps to promote its quality and stability.

While code coverage is not a guarantee of code health, it is a good indicator. This code base currently sits at ~90% coverage.

Performance

This codebase is designed to be extremely performant - it is part of its DNA. It is designed to perform the smallest amount of updates possible. You can have a read about performance work done for react-beautiful-dnd here:

• Rethinking drag and drop
• Dragging React performance forward
• Grabbing the flame 🔥

Size

Great care has been taken to keep the library as light as possible. It is currently ~31kb (gzip) in size. There could be a smaller net cost if you where already using one of the underlying dependencies.

Supported browsers

This library supports the standard Atlassian supported browsers for desktop:

Desktop	Version
Microsoft Internet Explorer(Windows)	Version 11
Microsoft Edge	Latest stable version supported
Mozilla Firefox (all platforms)	Latest stable version supported
Google Chrome (Windows and Mac)	Latest stable version supported
Safari (Mac)	Latest stable version on latest OS release supported

Mobile	Version
Chrome (Android and iOS)	Latest stable version supported
Mobile Safari (iOS)	Latest stable version supported
Android (Android)	The default browser on Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Author

Alex Reardon @alexandereardon

Collaborators

• Bogdan Chadkin @IAmTrySound
• Luke Batchelor @alukebatchelor
• Jared Crowe @jaredjcrowe
• Many other @Atlassian's!