How to listen to the window scroll event in a VueJS component?

I want to listen to the window scroll event in my Vue component. Here is what I tried so far:

<my-component v-on:scroll="scrollFunction">
    ...
</my-component>

With the scrollFunction(event) being defined in my component methods but it doesn't seem to work.

Anyone has any idea how to do this?

Thanks!

Actually I found a solution. I add an event listener on the scroll event when the component is created and remove the event listener when the component is destroyed.

export default {
  created () {
    window.addEventListener('scroll', this.handleScroll);
  },
  destroyed () {
    window.removeEventListener('scroll', this.handleScroll);
  },
  methods: {
    handleScroll (event) {
      // Any code to be executed when the window is scrolled
    }
  }
}

Hope this helps!

In my experience, using an event listener on scroll can create a lot of noise due to piping into that event stream, which can cause performance issues if you are executing a bulky handleScroll function.

I often use the technique shown here in the highest rated answer, but I add debounce on top of it, usually about 100ms yields good performance to UX ratio.

Here is an example using the top-rated answer with Lodash debounce added:

import debounce from 'lodash/debounce';

export default {
  methods: {
    handleScroll(event) {
      // Any code to be executed when the window is scrolled
      this.isUserScrolling = (window.scrollY > 0);
      console.log('calling handleScroll');
    }
  },

  mounted() {
    this.handleDebouncedScroll = debounce(this.handleScroll, 100);
    window.addEventListener('scroll', this.handleDebouncedScroll);
  },

  beforeDestroy() {
    // I switched the example from `destroyed` to `beforeDestroy`
    // to exercise your mind a bit. This lifecycle method works too.
    window.removeEventListener('scroll', this.handleDebouncedScroll);
  }
}

Try changing the value of 100 to 0 and 1000 so you can see the difference in how/when handleScroll is called.

BONUS: You can also accomplish this in an even more concise and reuseable manner with a library like vue-scroll. It is a great use case for you to learn about custom directives in Vue if you haven't seen those yet. Check out https://github.com/wangpin34/vue-scroll.

This is also a great tutorial by Sarah Drasner in the Vue docs: https://vuejs.org/v2/cookbook/creating-custom-scroll-directives.html

For Vue 3 users

In vue3 you should use unmounted or beforeUnmount, instead of beforeDestroy.

Lifecycle hook beforeDestroy is not emitted in Vue3

Here's what works directly with Vue custom components.

 <MyCustomComponent nativeOnScroll={this.handleScroll}>

or

<my-component v-on:scroll.native="handleScroll">

and define a method for handleScroll. Simple!

I've been in the need for this feature many times, therefore I've extracted it into a mixin. It can be used like this:

import windowScrollPosition from 'path/to/mixin.js'

new Vue({
  mixins: [ windowScrollPosition('position') ]
})

This creates a reactive position property (can be named whatever we like) on the Vue instance. The property contains the window scroll position as an [x,y] array.

Feel free to play around with this CodeSandbox demo.

Here's the code of the mixin. It's thoroughly commentated, so it should not be too hard to get an idea how it works:

function windowScrollPosition(propertyName) {
  return {
    data() {
      return {
        // Initialize scroll position at [0, 0]
        [propertyName]: [0, 0]
      }
    },
    created() {
      // Only execute this code on the client side, server sticks to [0, 0]
      if (!this.$isServer) {
        this._scrollListener = () => {
          // window.pageX/YOffset is equivalent to window.scrollX/Y, but works in IE
          // We round values because high-DPI devies can provide some really nasty subpixel values
          this[propertyName] = [
            Math.round(window.pageXOffset),
            Math.round(window.pageYOffset)
          ]
        }

        // Call listener once to detect initial position
        this._scrollListener()

        // When scrolling, update the position
        window.addEventListener('scroll', this._scrollListener)
      }
    },
    beforeDestroy() {
      // Detach the listener when the component is gone
      window.removeEventListener('scroll', this._scrollListener)
    }
  }
}