React Navigation Shared Element

React Navigation bindings for react-native-shared-element 💫

Compatibility

Supported by latest stable version (2.x):

• react-navigation 4 & 3
• react-navigation-stack 2
• react-navigation-stack 1 (use react-navigation-shared-element@1)

V3 prerelease (supports both react-navigation API 4.x and 5.x from a single codebase)

• react-navigation 5
• react-navigation 4 & 3
• react-navigation-stack 2

Unlikely to be supported:

• react-native-screens/createNativeStackNavigator

Index

• Installation
• Usage
• Documentation
  • createSharedElementStackNavigator
    • Debugging shared element transitions
  • SharedElement
  • sharedElements config
• Demo App
• Videos
• License

Installation

Open a Terminal in your project's folder and run,

$ yarn add react-navigation-shared-element react-native-shared-element

Enure that react-native-shared-element is also linked into your project.

Finally, make sure that the compatible react-navigation dependencies are installed:

$ yarn add react-navigation@4 react-navigation-stack@2

react-navigation@5 is not supported yet, so don't bother..

Usage

In order to enable shared element transitions, the following steps need to be performed

• Create a stack-navigator using createSharedElementStackNavigator
• Wrap your component with <SharedElement> and provide a unique id
• Define a static sharedElements config on the Screen that you want to animate

import { createSharedElementStackNavigator } from 'react-navigation-shared-element';

const stackNavigator = createSharedElementStackNavigator(
  {
    List: ListScreen,
    Detail: DetailScreen,
  },
  {
    initialRouteName: 'List',
  }
);

const AppContainer = createAppContainer(stackNavigator);

// ListScreen.js
import { SharedElement } from 'react-navigation-shared-element';

class ListScreen extends React.Component {
  renderItem(item) {
    const { navigation } = this.props;
    return (
      <TouchableOpacity onPress={() => navigation.push('Detail', { item })}>
        <SharedElement id={`item.${item.id}.photo`}>
          <Image source={item.photoUrl} />
        </SharedElement>
      </TouchableOpacity>
    );
  }
}

// DetailScreen.js
const DetailScreen = (props) => {
  const item = props.navigation.getParam('item');
  return (
    <SharedElement id={`item.${item.id}.photo`}>
      <Image source={item.photoUrl} />
    </SharedElement>
  );
};

DetailScreen.sharedElements = (navigation, otherNavigation, showing) => {
  const item = navigation.getParam('item');
  return [`item.${item.id}.photo`];
};

Documentation

createSharedElementStackNavigator

The createSharedElementStackNavigator function wraps an existing stack-navigator and enables shared element transitions for it.

It performs the following actions

• Creates a top-level renderer to host the shared element transitions
• Wraps each route with a shared element scene
• Detect route changes and trigger shared element transitions

Arguments

Argument	Type	Description
routeConfig	object	Routes-config
stackConfig	object	Optional stack navigator config
sharedElementConfig	object	Optional shared element config

Debugging shared element transitions

When transitions aren't working as expected, you can enable debug-mode to log scene transitions and shared-element id's to the console. The log output is useful for understanding scene changes and for reporting issues.

const stackNavigator1 = createSharedElementStackNavigator(
  { ... }, // routeConfig
  { ... } // stackConfig
  {
    name: 'MyStackNav',
    debug: true
  }
);

SharedElement

The <SharedElement> component accepts a single child and a "shared" id. The child is the element that is made available for doing shared element transitions. It can be any component, like a <View>, <Text> or <Image>. In case the wrapped view is an <Image>, special handling is performed to deal with image loading and resizing.

This component is synonymous for the <SharedElement> component as defined in react-native-shared-element. Instead of a node it uses an id to create a higher lever API which automatically ties in with the scenes created by createSharedElementStackNavigator.

Props

Property	Type	Description
children	element	A single child component, which must map to a real view in the native view hierarchy
id	string	Unique id of the shared element
View props...		Other props supported by View

sharedElements config

In order to trigger shared element transitions between screens, a static sharedElements config needs to be defined on one of the two screens. For each screen transition, both screens are evaluated and checked whether they have a sharedElements config. The screen that is being shown is evaluated first, followed by the screen that is being hidden. If undefined is returned, evaluation continues at the other screen.

The sharedElements function receives 3 arguments

Argument	Type	Description
navigation	NavigationProp	Navigation prop of the current screen. You can use this to get the params of the screen using getParam, or the route-name using state.routeName
otherNavigation	NavigationProp	The navigation-prop of the other screen. You can use this to get the params of that screen using getParam, or the route-name using state.routeName
showing	boolean	true when this screen is being shown, and false when this screen is being hidden.

The return value should be either undefined or an array of shared-element configs or identifiers. Specifying a string-identifier is shorthand for [{id: 'myid'}].

Basic example

class DetailScreen extends Component {
  static sharedElements = (navigation, otherNavigation, showing) => {
    // Transition element `item.${item.id}.photo` when either
    // showing or hiding this screen (coming from any route)
    const item = navigation.getParam('item');
    return [`item.${item.id}.photo`];
  }

  render() {...}
}

Only transition when coming from a specific route

If you only want to show a transition when pushing from a particular screen, then use the route-name and showing argument.

class DetailScreen extends Component {
  static sharedElements = (navigation, otherNavigation, showing) => {
    if ((otherNavigation.state.routeName === 'List') && showing) {
      const item = navigation.getParam('item');
      return [`item.${item.id}.photo`];
    }
  }
  ...
}

Customize the animation

If the source- and target elements are visually distinct, the consider using a cross-fade animation.

class DetailScreen extends Component {
  static sharedElements = (navigation, otherNavigation, showing) => {
    const item = navigation.getParam('item');
    return [{
      id: `item.${item.id}.photo`,
      animation: 'fade'
      // resize: 'clip'
      // align: ''left-top'
    }];
  }
  ...
}

The following fields can be specified in a config item

Field	Type	Description
id	string	Id that corresponds to the id specified in the <SharedElement> component
otherId	string	Optional id that corresponds to the id specified in the other screen.
animation	move | fade	Type of animation to perform (default = move), see SharedElementAnimation
resize	auto | stretch | clip | none	Resize behavior of the transition (default = auto), see SharedElementResize
align	auto | top-left | ...	Align behavior of the transition (default = auto), see SharedElementAlign

Demo App

• ./example
• react-navigation-shared-element-demo

Videos

• Snapchat Shared Transitions - “Can it be done in React Native?” (with react-navigation v5)
• Airbnb Shared Transition - “Can it be done in React Native?” (with react-navigation v4)

License

React navigation shared element library is licensed under The MIT License.