How I Kept a Live Chat Feed Smooth at 3,700+ Messages
How I tackled message volume challenges in my LiveShop live shopping stream. Performance improvements and results are discussed here.
LiveShop is an interface that simulates live shopping streams. When message volume spikes, a naive chat feed implementation can lead to performance issues. While 50 messages may seem fine, a few hundred can cause full re-renders, leading to stutters in the stream.
To address this, virtualization was implemented using react-window, rendering only the rows within the visible scroll viewport. As a result, even with 3,700 messages, the feed maintained a steady 60fps, and the DOM node count reduced to just 14.