Handling 1,000,000 Rows with Simple Table: The Lightweight React Grid

PerformanceLarge DatasetsReact

Discover how Simple Table efficiently handles massive datasets while maintaining exceptional performance and responsiveness in your React applications.

The Challenge: Managing Extreme Data Volumes

Modern web applications often need to display and interact with enormous datasets. Whether you're building analytics dashboards, financial platforms, or enterprise systems, the ability to manage large data volumes efficiently is crucial.

Traditional data grids struggle when handling more than a few thousand rows, leading to:

  • • Sluggish rendering and poor user experience
  • • Browser freezes and unresponsive interfaces
  • • Memory consumption issues leading to crashes
  • • Complex implementation requiring specialized knowledge

Simple Table solves these challenges with an optimized architecture designed specifically for high-performance data rendering.

Simple Table's Approach to Large Datasets

Simple Table employs several advanced techniques to effectively manage large datasets:

Virtual Rendering

Only renders rows visible in the viewport, dramatically reducing DOM elements and memory usage regardless of total dataset size.

Efficient Updates

Uses React's virtual DOM efficiently with optimized rendering cycles to update only what has changed, avoiding costly full re-renders.

Pagination Support

Built-in pagination reduces initial load and improves perceived performance while supporting server-side pagination for truly massive datasets.

Memory Management

Intelligent data handling prevents memory leaks and optimizes garbage collection, maintaining performance even during extended use.

Performance Demo

Experience Simple Table's performance firsthand. Use the controls below to generate different data volumes and see how quickly the table renders and responds.

Simple Table Performance Demo

Experience how Simple Table effortlessly handles one million rows with near-instant rendering and smooth scrolling.

Current Dataset:10,000 rows

Implementation: Simpler Than You Might Think

One of Simple Table's strengths is its straightforward API. Here's how you can implement a high-performance table for large datasets:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import { SimpleTable, HeaderObject } from "simple-table-core";
import "simple-table-core/styles.css";

// Define headers for the performance demo
const PERFORMANCE_HEADERS: HeaderObject[] = [
  { accessor: "id", label: "ID", width: 80, isSortable: true, type: "number" },
  { accessor: "repName", label: "Sales Rep", width: "1fr", isSortable: true, type: "string" },
  { accessor: "dealSize", label: "Deal Size", width: 120, isSortable: true, type: "number" },
  { accessor: "isWon", label: "Status", width: 100, isSortable: true, type: "boolean" },
  { accessor: "dealProfit", label: "Profit", width: 120, isSortable: true, type: "number" },
  { accessor: "dealValue", label: "Value", width: 120, isSortable: true, type: "number" },
];

// Generates a large dataset for demo purposes
const generateLargeDataset = (count: number) => {
  const data = [];
  const config = {
    categories: ["Software", "Hardware", "Services", "Consulting"],
    maxDealValue: 100000,
    minDealValue: 1000,
    maxProfit: 0.8,
    minProfit: 0.1,
  };

  for (let i = 0; i < count; i++) {
    const isWon = Math.random() > 0.5;
    const profitMargin = Math.random() * (config.maxProfit - config.minProfit) + config.minProfit;
    const dealValue = Math.random() * (config.maxDealValue - config.minDealValue) + config.minDealValue;
    const dealProfit = isWon ? dealValue * profitMargin : 0;

    data.push({
      id: i,
      repName: `Sales Rep ${i.toLocaleString()}`,
      dealSize: Math.random() * 10000 + 100,
      isWon,
      dealProfit,
      dealValue,
      profitMargin,
    });
  }

  return data;
};

export default function PerformanceDemo() {
  const [data, setData] = useState([]);

  useEffect(() => {
    // Initial data load
    handleGenerateData(1000000); // 1 million rows!
  }, []);

  const handleGenerateData = (count: number) => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      const newData = generateLargeDataset(count);
      setData(newData);
    }, 10);
  };

  return (
    <SimpleTable
      defaultHeaders={PERFORMANCE_HEADERS}
      rows={data}
      rowIdAccessor="id"
      height="500px"
      editColumns
      columnResizing
      selectableCells
    />
  );
}

Key Implementation Tips:

  • • Set fixed heights to enable virtualization and optimize rendering
  • • Consider server-side operations (sorting, filtering) for datasets over 100,000 rows
  • • Implement lazy loading for your data to improve initial page load time

Performance Comparison

How does Simple Table compare to other popular grid libraries when rendering large datasets? We ran benchmarks rendering 100,000 rows across different libraries:

Simple Table420ms
AG Grid780ms
Material UI DataGrid950ms
React Table620ms

Note: Benchmarks performed on Chrome 92, MacBook Pro 2021, M1 Pro, 16GB RAM. Results may vary based on hardware, browser, and specific implementation details.

Conclusion and Best Practices

Simple Table provides an efficient solution for handling large datasets in React applications without compromising on performance or developer experience.

When working with large datasets, remember to:

  • • Implement virtualization by setting fixed heights
  • • Minimize unnecessary re-renders with memoization
  • • Consider server-side operations for extremely large datasets
  • • Monitor memory usage during development

Ready to scale your data grids?

Simple Table makes it easy to handle large datasets with lightning-fast performance.