I’m working on a web application that needs to display huge amounts of information from my database. The problem is that when I try to load everything at once, the page becomes really slow and sometimes crashes the browser. I’ve heard about different techniques like pagination, lazy loading, and chunking data, but I’m not sure which approach works best for handling large datasets.
What are the most effective methods to transfer big data collections from server to frontend without causing performance issues? I’m particularly interested in solutions that won’t freeze the user interface while the data is being loaded. Any practical examples or recommendations would be really helpful for my current project.
virtual scrolling is the way to go! it only renders what’s visible, so you won’t lag with large data sets. check out react-window for this; i’ve used it with over 100k items without issues. also, server-side filtering helps a ton too!
Interesting challenge! What data volumes are we dealing with - thousands or millions of records? Have you thought about streaming instead of batching? WebSockets can be gr8 for real-time chunked delivery without blocking the UI thread.
Had the exact same problem with a dashboard pulling analytics from millions of records. Here’s what actually worked: hybrid approach with server-side pagination plus progressive loading. Don’t fetch everything upfront - set your backend to return 50-100 records per request, then have the frontend grab the next batch when users scroll near the bottom. Keeps initial load times fast and scrolling smooth. Also threw in data virtualization on the frontend so it only renders DOM elements for what’s actually visible. Pro tip: cache the chunks you’ve already loaded in memory. Otherwise users scrolling back up will trigger unnecessary API calls.