Improve DataTable re-rendering performance #2993

alexzherdev · 2022-01-28T02:12:24Z

Additional description

This improves re-rendering performance of the DataTable in scenarios involving many rows (in the hundreds/thousands). Main optimizations introduced:

<DataTable>: memoized TableContext value so that if table gets re-rendered with no real changes (e.g. when its parent re-rendered and didn't pass any new props), it doesn't trigger unnecessary re-renders in the context consumers
<DataTable>: memoized assistive text and columns passed down to rows to reduce their re-renders
<DataTableRow>: any change in TableContext would mark all rows for re-rendering due to useContext in the row. Implemented option 3 here to stop unnecessary re-rendering below the row (with the exception of relevant nested context consumers)
context-helper: turned it into a hook to enable useCallback. This was necessary so that the functions returned from the helper could be properly used as useMemo dependencies elsewhere.

Note that to take advantage of these improvements, the consumer application needs to memoize the columns passed into the table:

const columns = useMemo(() => [
  <DataTableColumn key="0" />,
  <DataTableColumn key="1" />
], []);

<DataTable>{columns}</DataTable>

Traces below are from a consumer application showing reduced re-rendering when clicking a row (these are taken from the re-render caused by the focus change in the table). Overall rendering time (measured via Chrome's profiler) decreased by 40-50%.

Before

After

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CircleCI tests pass. This includes linting, Mocha, Jest, Storyshots, and components/component-docs.json tests.
Tests have been added for new props to prevent regressions in the future. See readme.
Review the appropriate Storybook stories. Open http://localhost:9001/.
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