Intro

tip

This component has been converted to an NPM package with the following improvements:

• no longer requires react-router as a dependency
• typescript compatible

You can view the github repo here: github > ncoughlin/scroll-to-hash-element

and the NPM repo here: npm > scroll-to-hash-element

React-Router does not have built in functionality to handle Hash Links, also known as Anchor Links. Hash links navigate to a specific element on a page by targeting the element id.

Previously this issue was dealt with using a package called react-router-hash-link.

That package doesn't appear to be compatible with react-router-v6 however.

Because i'm not a fan of installing unnecessary packages anyways, i've created a component that solves this issue.

Scrolling itself is provided by the native browser method Element.scrollIntoView()

I've created a Github repo for this component: github: Ncoughlin: ScrollToHashElement

So please check there to make sure you are getting the most recent version of this component, it's possible there will be improvements on this over time.

Component

import { useMemo, useEffect } from "react";
import { useLocation } from "react-router-dom";

const ScrollToHashElement = () => {
  let location = useLocation();

  let hashElement = useMemo(() => {
    let hash = location.hash;
    const removeHashCharacter = (str) => {
      const result = str.slice(1);
      return result;
    };

    if (hash) {
      let element = document.getElementById(removeHashCharacter(hash));
      return element;
    } else {
      return null;
    }
  }, [location]);

  useEffect(() => {
    if (hashElement) {
      hashElement.scrollIntoView({
        behavior: "smooth",
        // block: "end",
        inline: "nearest",
      });
    }
  }, [hashElement]);

  return null;
};

export default ScrollToHashElement;

Installation

Just place this component anywhere in the application and it will work passively in the background.

import React from "react";
// components
import ScrollToHashElement from "./ScrollToHashElement";
import Header from "./Header";
import Content from "./Content";

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div className="grid">
      <ScrollToHashElement />
      <Header />
      <Content />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;

React-Router Links

You can create React-Router links as you normally would. For example a link to a hash element on the homepage would look like this

<Link to="/#delightful-visualization">Delightful Visualization</Link>

or this

<Link to="#delightful-visualization">Delightful Visualization</Link>

a sub page like this

<Link to="/about#story">Our Story</Link>

Scroll Behavior

Scroll behavior such as smooth scroll can be easily modified by changing the options in the useEffect portion of the component

hashElement.scrollIntoView({
  behavior: "smooth",
  // block: "end",
  inline: "nearest",
});

Recent Work

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Technologies Used

TypeScript

Electron

React

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Technologies Used

Front End

JavaScript

Docker

React

Redux

Vite

Next

Docusaurus

Stripe

Sentry

D3

React-Flow

TipTap

Back End

JavaScript

Python

Cognito

API Gateway

Lambda

Athena

Glue

Step Functions

SQS

Dynamo DB

S3

CloudWatch

CloudFront

Route 53

EventBridge