Dragging to Scroll with JavaScript

My portfolio has some cards to showcase projects and blog posts. On mobile, these cards display in a horizontal slider, which is easy enough to scroll on a touchscreen, or trackpad, but what if someone is viewing the website at a small size on a device with a mouse? Well they can of course use the circular buttons below the cards, but I wanted to give these users an experience the same as on a touchscreen, allowing them to drag and scroll the card list.

I’ve used the vue-dragscroll library before on another project, but fancied a challenge of doing it myself for my portfolio.

I came across this article , and adapted the code to fit my use-case.

The code

.scroll-container {
  display: grid;
  column-gap: 10px;
  grid-auto-flow: column;
  // We set the grid colums here, a gutter each side, then I have 6 cards so I use the grid repeat function to make 6 equal width columns. The columns are 100vw minus the left and right gutter, and minus the column gap we set above
  grid-template-columns: 30px repeat(6, calc(100vw - 80px)) 30px;
  // We want to allow the cards to overflow horizontally
  overflow-x: auto;
  padding: 0;

  // This allows snapping to each card, so we don't get stuck half over one card and half over another. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/scroll-snap-type
  scroll-snap-type: x mandatory;
}
.drag-scroll--enabled {
  cursor: grab
}
.drag-scroll--scrolling {
  cursor: grabbing;
  user-select: none;
  // We set the scroll-snap-type to none here to allow for a more natural experience with dragging and scrolling. If we didn't, you wouldn't see any indication that you are scrolling the container
  scroll-snap-type: none
}

<div ref="container" class="row grid scroll-container">
  <div class="card">
    ...
  </div>
</div>

export default {
  data () {
    return {
      position: {
        left: 0,
        x: 0
      }
    }
  },
  mounted () {
    this.dragScrollWatcher()
    // We want to listen to the resize listener here to enable/disable the drag to scroll functionality depending on the layout of the page - for example, on my site, the cards are only in a horizontal slider below the 768px breakpoint. I chose to handle this with CSS in case I want to use these functions elsewhere, rather than having these breakpoints set in the JS
    window.addEventListener('resize', this.dragScrollWatcher)
  },
  beforeDestroy () {
    // We want to clear up any event listeners when we switch pages
    this.stopDragScroll()
    window.removeEventListener('resize', this.dragScrollWatcher)
  },
methods: {
    dragScrollWatcher () {

      // We only want to start drag scroll if the following conditions are met
      if (!this.hasTouchScreen() && this.hasOverflowAuto()) {
        this.startDragScroll()
      } else {
        this.stopDragScroll()
      }
    },
    startDragScroll () {

      // We set a listener for mousedcown so we know when to start the drag and scroll
      document.addEventListener('mousedown', this.mouseDownHandler)
      //
 We set this class on the container to allow the CSS to set some styles such as the cursor: grab
      this.$refs.container.classList.add('drag-scroll--enabled')
    },
    stopDragScroll () {
      document.removeEventListener('mousedown', this.mouseDownHandler)
      this.$refs.container.classList.remove('drag-scroll--enabled')
      // This clears up some event listeners and resets our classes
      this.mouseUpHandler()
    },
    hasTouchScreen () {

      // If this is a touch device, scrolling is already easy, so we don't need to enable our drag scroll feature
      return ('ontouchstart' in window)
    },
    hasOverflowAuto () {
      /*
        Rather than worrying about breakpoints here, we let CSS handle it, as they may be different for each component
        If overflow-x: auto is not on the element, then it is not a scrolling element, so we don't need to run DragToScroll
      */
      return (getComputedStyle(this.$refs.container).getPropertyValue('overflow-x') === 'auto')
    },
    mouseDownHandler (e) {

      // We set a class here to let the CSS know that we are currently scrolling, and to apply the relevant styles, such as the grabbing cursor
      this.$refs.container.classList.add('drag-scroll--scrolling')

      this.position = {
        // The current scroll
        left: this.$refs.container.scrollLeft,
        // Get the current mouse position
        x: e.clientX
      }

      // We want to listen to the mouse move so we know how much to scroll the container
      document.addEventListener('mousemove', this.mouseMoveHandler)

      // We want to know when to stop dragging and scrolling
      document.addEventListener('mouseup', this.mouseUpHandler)
    },
    mouseMoveHandler (e) {
      // How far the mouse has been moved
      const dx = e.clientX - this.position.x

      // Scroll the element
      this.$refs.container.scrollLeft = this.position.left - dx
    },
    mouseUpHandler () {

      // We don't care about listening to the mouse moving now, so we can remove the listener
      document.removeEventListener('mousemove', this.mouseMoveHandler)
      // We've just fired this listener, so no need to fire it again
      document.removeEventListener('mouseup', this.mouseUpHandler)

      // We can now remove the class which means we don't show the styles specific to when we are scrolling
      this.$refs.container.classList.remove('drag-scroll--scrolling')
    }
  }
}

How it looks

Native touch scroll

Dragging to Scroll with JavaScript

I often find articles and need some further context before I can adapt them, so all of the source code of my site is available on GitHub for you to view. You can always contact me if you need further help.