Using List Views

Important: The Vega SDK supports many of the React Native version 0.72 components and APIs. You can use the supported components and APIs in the same manner as an ordinary React Native app. This page lists a specific React Native feature supported by the Vega SDK and contains React Native v72 documentation from the reactnative.dev website created by Meta and other contributors and licensed under the Attribution 4.0 International License. For more information about React Native v72, see the React Native documentation, version 0.72. For the most current feature information, see the Release Notes.

React Native provides a suite of components for presenting lists of data. Generally, you'll want to use either FlatList or SectionList.

The FlatList component displays a scrolling list of changing, but similarly structured, data. FlatList works well for long lists of data, where the number of items might change over time. Unlike the more generic ScrollView, the FlatList only renders elements that are currently showing on the screen, not all the elements at once.

The FlatList component requires two props: data and renderItem. data is the source of information for the list. renderItem takes one item from the source and returns a formatted component to render.

This example creates a basic FlatList of hardcoded data. Each item in the data props is rendered as a Text component. The FlatListBasics component then renders the FlatList and all Text components.

import React from 'react';
import {FlatList, StyleSheet, Text, View} from 'react-native';

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    paddingTop: 22,
  },
  item: {
    padding: 10,
    fontSize: 18,
    height: 44,
  },
});

const FlatListBasics = () => {
  return (
    <View style={styles.container}>
      <FlatList
        data={[
          {key: 'Devin'},
          {key: 'Dan'},
          {key: 'Dominic'},
          {key: 'Jackson'},
          {key: 'James'},
          {key: 'Joel'},
          {key: 'John'},
          {key: 'Jillian'},
          {key: 'Jimmy'},
          {key: 'Julie'},
        ]}
        renderItem={({item}) => <Text style={styles.item}>{item.key}</Text>}
      />
    </View>
  );
};

export default FlatListBasics;

If you want to render a set of data broken into logical sections, maybe with section headers, similar to UITableViews on iOS, then a SectionList is the way to go.

import React from 'react';
import {SectionList, StyleSheet, Text, View} from 'react-native';

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    paddingTop: 22,
  },
  sectionHeader: {
    paddingTop: 2,
    paddingLeft: 10,
    paddingRight: 10,
    paddingBottom: 2,
    fontSize: 14,
    fontWeight: 'bold',
    backgroundColor: 'rgba(247,247,247,1.0)',
  },
  item: {
    padding: 10,
    fontSize: 18,
    height: 44,
  },
});

const SectionListBasics = () => {
  return (
    <View style={styles.container}>
      <SectionList
        sections={[
          {title: 'D', data: ['Devin', 'Dan', 'Dominic']},
          {
            title: 'J',
            data: [
              'Jackson',
              'James',
              'Jillian',
              'Jimmy',
              'Joel',
              'John',
              'Julie',
            ],
          },
        ]}
        renderItem={({item}) => <Text style={styles.item}>{item}</Text>}
        renderSectionHeader={({section}) => (
          <Text style={styles.sectionHeader}>{section.title}</Text>
        )}
        keyExtractor={item => `basicListEntry-${item}`}
      />
    </View>
  );
};

export default SectionListBasics;

One of the most common uses for a list view is displaying data that you fetch from a server. To do that, you will need to learn about networking in React Native.

Last updated: Sep 30, 2025