Animate CSS Grid

Demo example

Seamlessly animate all CSS grid properties, including:

grid-column and grid-row

grid-template-columns

grid-gap

• Fork Photo Grid Example on CodeSandbox (uses ES2015 imports)

• Fork Photo Grid Example on Codepen (uses script tags)

This script makes it easy to transition your CSS grid gracefully from one state to another. If the content of the grid changes, or if the grid or one of its children is updated with the addition or removal of a class, the grid will automatically transition to its new configuration.

How to use it

Just call the wrapGrid method on your grid container, and optionally provide a config object as a second argument. If the grid is removed from the page, the animations will automatically be cleaned up as well.

ES6 Module:

# yarn
yarn add @oak-digital/animate-css-grid
# npm
npm install @oak-digital/animate-css-grid-2

import { AnimateCSSGrid } from 'animate-css-grid'

const grid = document.querySelector(".grid");
const ag = new AnimateCSSGrid(grid)

Optional config object:

{
  // int: default is 0 ms
  // stagger: 100, // Not yet supported
  // int: default is 250 ms
  duration: 500
  // string: default is easeInOut
  // easings are just a '(v:number) => number' function and can be imported from popmotion
  easing: backInOut,
  // see ## Modes
  mode: 'absolute',
  modeOptions: {},
}

Available easing functions:

• 'linear'
• 'easeIn' / 'easeOut' / 'easeInOut'
• 'circIn' / 'circOut' / 'circInOut'
• 'backIn' / 'backOut' / 'backInOut'
• 'anticipate'

Learn more about available easing functions here.

The AnimateCSSGrid instance gives you access to the following methods and fields

// listen for events
ag.on(eventName, yourFunction)
// listen for eventName, but only once
ag.once(eventName, yourFunction)
// remove event listener
ag.off(eventName, yourFunction)

// force a grid animation - do this if you only change styles
// or something else that does not trigger the animation
ag.forceGridAnimation()

// removes all event listeners and the animations will no longer work
ag.destroy()

The AnimateCSSGridItem instances also have some methods which are important

// same kind of event handling as the grid,. but different events
gridItem.on
gridItem.once
gridItem.off

// This method "extracts" the item from the grid, by apply `position: absolute` and setting width, height, left and right.
gridItem.extract()
// This method restores the extraction
gridItem.unExtract()

// removes everything on the instance
gridItem.destroy()

Modes

The grid can be animated in different modes, which require some different setup.

mode: 'static'

This is the simplest mode, which does not require any extra css setup to work. The elements will be animated with transforms and is generally the most smooth option with a lot of elements.

mode: 'absolute' (default)

This requires the grid to have postion: relative or a relativ-ish position. The elements will still be animated with scale and translate, but gives you some extra options. By default modeOptions.animateWidthHeight is set to true, which will animate the grid itself if it changes height or width. Alternatively you may want modeOptions.itemAnimateWidthHeight (default false) set to true for the items to be animated using width/height instead of scale.

Events

These are the event types.

ag.on('start', (affectedElements) => {})
ag.on('end', (affectedElements) => {})
ag.on('beforeDestroy', () => {})
ag.on('afterDestroy', () => {})
ag.on('itemStart', (item) => {})
ag.on('itemEnd', (item) => {})
ag.on('itemBeforeDestroy', (item) => {})
ag.on('itemAfterDestroy', (item) => {})

TODO: add documentation for AnimateCSSGridItem

Requirements

1. The updates to the grid will have to come from addition or removal of a class or element. Currently, inline style updates will not trigger transitions. (Although you can manually trigger transitions in that case by calling forceGridAnimation())
2. Important If a grid item has children, they should be surrounded by a single container element. This is so we can apply a counter scale and prevent children elements from getting warped during scale transitions of the parent.

Example:

<!-- grid class -->
<ul class="some-grid-class-that-changes">
  <li class="grid-item">
    <!-- each grid item must have a single direct child -->
    <div>
      <h3>Item title</h3>
      <div>Item body</div>
    </div>
  </li>
<div>

How it works

The script registers a MutationObserver that activates when the grid or one of its children adds or loses a class or element. That means there's no need to remove the animations before removing the grid, everything should be cleaned up automatically. It uses the FLIP animation technique to smoothly update the grid, applying a counter transform to the children of each item so that they do not appear distorted while the transition occurs.

It should work on container elements without CSS grid applied as well, but was developed and tested with CSS grid in mind.

Usage with Frameworks

The animate-css-grid library can easily be used with frameworks like React or Vue.

For Vue you can use vue-animate-css-grid

Check out the React example

Publishing

pnpm run build
pnpm publish