Streamlit-scroll-navigation - New Streamlit component for seamless scroll-based navigation

Custom Components
, , ,
1

Introducing streamlit-scroll-navigation: flexible scroll-based navigation for Streamlit

Hey everyone, I’m excited to introduce streamlit-scroll-navigation, a customizable scroll-based navigation component for Streamlit apps.

I love the aesthetic of scrollable single-page applications (SPA). They elegantly present multiple sections of content without requiring users to navigate across different pages. With streamlit-scroll-navigation, you can easily create SPA pages in Streamlit. This component enables smooth scroll-based navigation for portfolios, data stories, or other apps that present multiple sections on the same page.

Demo:

Features

  • Smooth Animations: Scrolling to anchors on the page feels fluid and seamless.
  • Anchor tracking: As the user scrolls, the active anchor automatically updates to the nearest visible anchor.
  • Configurable Icons: Customize Bootstrap icons for each navigation option and the menu title to give your app a personal touch.
  • Configurable Styles: Edit CSS attributes with the override_styles parameter for additional customization.
  • Styled with Bootstrap: The component comes styled with Bootstrap for a sleek and responsive design.

Installation

To install, simply run:

pip install streamlit-scroll-navigation

Parameters

scroll_navbar() accepts the following parameters:

  • anchor_ids (required): The list of anchor IDs representing the sections or points to navigate.
  • menu_title (optional, default='Menu'): The title of the scroll navigation menu.
  • icons (optional, default=[]): A list of Bootstrap icon names corresponding to each navigation option.
  • default_index (optional, default=0): The index of the initially selected item.
  • orientation (optional, default='vertical'): The orientation of the navigation (either 'vertical' or 'horizontal').

The function returns the currently selected anchor’s ID.

Example

This examples contains 2 scroll navigation bars with different orientations. Explore example.py for more use cases.

# Create a dummy streamlit page 
import streamlit as st
from streamlit_scroll_navigation import scroll_navbar

# Anchor IDs and icons
anchor_ids = ["About", "Features", "Settings", "Pricing", "Contact"]
anchor_icons = ["info-circle", "lightbulb", "gear", "tag", "envelope"]

# 1. as sidebar menu
with st.sidebar:
    st.subheader("Example 1")
    scroll_navbar(
        anchor_ids,
        anchor_labels=None, # Use anchor_ids as labels
        anchor_icons=anchor_icons)

# 2. horizontal menu
st.subheader("Example 2")
scroll_navbar(
        anchor_ids,
        key = "navbar2",
        anchor_icons=anchor_icons,
        orientation="horizontal")

# Dummy page setup
for anchor_id in anchor_ids:
    st.subheader(anchor_id,anchor=anchor_id)
    st.write("content " * 100)

Give it a try and let me know your feedback, questions, or if you want to contribute!

13 Likes
2

That is very cool! I really love how smooth it is, and all the different options for presenting the navigation!

(By the way, looks like your number 5 “force_body” example has a bug, and presumably should be “Contact”, or one of the other existing anchors).

3

Thanks for catching that! I just pushed a fix to the demo to make the force_anchor example work.

1 Like
4

This is awesome! Love how dynamic it makes the page feel. :star_struck:

5

Awesome! I love using Streamlit for single-page apps, so I had to give this component some love.

1 Like
6

This is an awesome component!

Is there a current method to be able to return to a specific section of the page? Like clicking the title of the anchor point for instance like you would in markdown? Thinking about how this scales when you have a large number of sections on the page and you can’t easily scroll to the top of the page instantly!

7

Thanks for your feedback. I added the disable_scroll parameter to the scroll_nav() function. When disable_scroll=True, the navigation buttons instantly snap to their respective anchors. Let me know if this doesn’t work for your use case.

*Pushed to version 1.1.3

8

Is there a way to utilize this as a navigation bar and instead of clicking down to a different section on the same page, it redirects you to an entirely new page? mainly love the design and fluidity of it.

9

Thank for the feedback!

Page navigation is outside the scope of this project, but Streamlit has built-in page navigation.

10

this is fantastic. love example 1 in particular. thanks for the share!

1 Like
11

This looks really nice! But I have one question/concern: Do I see it correct that each time I click on a button in the navbar, the whole app is run again? Is there a way to omit this?

Because the initial loading of my app takes a few seconds, and if this done again for each click, it counteracts the nice direct response that your scroll-navigation provides.

12

Great find! Most people definitely don’t want their entire script to rerun after navigating to an anchor.

I made scroll_navbar() a fragment function so that user interaction reruns don’t affect the entire page. This should fix the problem, but let me know if it persists

*update pushed to v.1.1.6 on pip

13

Awesome that you fixed this so fast, thanks!

Only thing I noticed is that the force_anchor example is still reloading the page (well, it’s a standard streamlit button). Besides, I can’t get this option to work for me at all on a first try. Which is not too bad; I just thought about using it as a “Go back to top of page” button.

Also, auto_update_anchor doesn’t seem to work (at least like I think it should work). It’s not really updating the navbar to reflect the currently “closest” anchor. This is true also for https://scrollnav-demo.streamlit.app I think.

14

Thanks again for the feedback. v1.1.6 implemented StreamLit fragments to make navbar interactions not rerun the entire page, but this broke force_anchor because the string that StreamLit passes to fragments does not get reset. v1.2.1 adds the ForceAnchor class to consume forced anchors without a page rerun. Check out the updated Example 5 that pushes force_anchor from a fragment. This should meet satisfy your use case:

st.subheader("Example 5", help="Programatically select an anchor within StreamLit fragment")
@st.fragment
def example5():
    from streamlit_scroll_navigation import ForceAnchor
    force_settings = ForceAnchor()
    if st.button("Go to Settings"):
        force_settings.push("Settings")
    scroll_navbar(
            anchor_ids,
            key="navbar5",
            anchor_icons=anchor_icons,
            orientation="horizontal",
            force_anchor=force_settings)
example5()
15

I believe auto_update_anchor=True is working as expected. When the active anchor leaves the screen, the closest anchor to the old active anchor is selected. I couldn’t think of a better anchor update pattern that wouldn’t have a ton of edge cases, but let me know if one exists.

16

Thanks again for the quick fix! Is there a way to put the st.button at another position in the app, not directly next to the navbar? I tried it with placing a container1 = st.container() at the top of the page, and at the bottom add the code of example 5, with the scroll_navbar() inside with container1: (see example below). This works in principle, but it creates a second navbar inside the container after pushing the button.

# Setup
import streamlit as st
from streamlit_scroll_navigation import scroll_navbar
st.set_page_config(page_title="Scroll Navigation Demo")

# Anchor IDs and icons
anchor_ids = ["About", "Features", "Settings", "Pricing", "Contact"]
anchor_icons = ["info-circle", "lightbulb", "gear", "tag", "envelope"]

container1 = st.container()
    
# Dummy page setup
for anchor_id in anchor_ids:
    st.subheader(anchor_id,anchor=anchor_id)
    st.write("content " * 100)

# 5. Force anchor
st.subheader("Example 5", help="Programatically select an anchor within StreamLit fragment")
@st.fragment
def example5():
    from streamlit_scroll_navigation import ForceAnchor
    force_settings = ForceAnchor()
    if st.button("Go to Settings"):
        force_settings.push("Settings")
    with container1:
        scroll_navbar(
            anchor_ids,
            key="navbar5",
            anchor_icons=anchor_icons,
            orientation="horizontal",
            force_anchor=force_settings)
example5()
17

Interestingly, now your example works as expected. Maybe there was just some hiccup on my computer last time. :person_shrugging:

18

Ah that has something to do with fragments not triggering redraws of external containers. A simple hack is to use st.empty() instead of st.container(). This makes the container only hold the most recently drawn component.

# Setup
import streamlit as st
from streamlit_scroll_navigation import scroll_navbar
st.set_page_config(page_title="Scroll Navigation Demo")

# Anchor IDs and icons
anchor_ids = ["About", "Features", "Settings", "Pricing", "Contact"]
anchor_icons = ["info-circle", "lightbulb", "gear", "tag", "envelope"]

container1 = st.empty()
    
# Dummy page setup
for anchor_id in anchor_ids:
    st.subheader(anchor_id,anchor=anchor_id)
    st.write("content " * 100)

# 5. Force anchor
st.subheader("Example 5", help="Programatically select an anchor within StreamLit fragment")
@st.fragment
def example5():
    from streamlit_scroll_navigation import ForceAnchor
    force_settings = ForceAnchor()
    if st.button("Go to Settings"):
        force_settings.push("Settings")
    with container1:
        scroll_navbar(
            anchor_ids,
            key="navbar5",
            anchor_icons=anchor_icons,
            orientation="horizontal",
            force_anchor=force_settings)
example5()
19

I bet it was a weird bug in v1.1.6, but it’s fixed now :partying_face:.

2 Likes
20

Yes, that works, thanks!

1 Like