Simple Video Player Tutorial with React

Do you want to implement a simple playlist for videosin your Reactapplication? With this, you can select videos from a predefined list and play them in the video player. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use a select element to choose different video URLs and display them in the player. Let’s get started right away!

Key takeaways

1. The use of the select element in React allows for an easy selection of video URLs.
2. The state is used to store the current video URL and utilize it in the video player.
3. Event handlers like onChange help recognize and respond to the user's selection.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Set the Basics

Before you start with the code, make sure you have set up your React project. You can easily create a new React app for this tutorial if you don't have one already. Once that is done, start implementing the playlist.

Step 2: Add Select Element

Add a select element to your application. This element will contain the various videos to choose from. At the start, you could insert three fixed options with predetermined video URLs. Here is an example:

<select>
  <option value="URL1">Elephant Dream</option>
  <option value="URL2">Sintel</option>
  <option value="URL3">Big Buck Bunny</option>
</select>

Step 3: Create Stateful Component

To manage the selection of the video, use the React state. Set the initial state to an empty string and utilize useState to store the current video URL.

const [currentVideo, setCurrentVideo] = useState('');

Step 4: Add onChange Event

To respond to changes in the select element, add the onChange event handler to the select element. This event handler will call the function that updates the state:

<select onChange={e => setCurrentVideo(e.target.value)}>
  ...
</select>

Step 5: Integrate Video Player

Now it is time to configure the video player to use the current URL from the state. Create a video player component where you pass the src property to the video element:

<video src={currentVideo} controls />

Step 6: Error Handling

If you encounter Not a Number errors, you can add a simple conditional check to ensure that the duration of a video is loaded correctly and handled accordingly. An example of such a check:

if (duration > 0) {
  // Logic for handling the duration
}

Step 7: Enhance the User Interface

To present the videos created in an appealing manner, consider adjusting the size of the video element. You could use CSS for this:

video {
  width: 100%;
  height: auto;
}

Step 8: Make Playlist Dynamic

The final step is to replace the fixed options with a dynamic list. You can do this by using an array of video URLs in your state management system. With this array, you can dynamically generate and modify the options in the select.

const videos = ['URL1', 'URL2', 'URL3'];

Here you can later incorporate logic to add or remove URLs.

Summary - React Tutorial: Playlist with Select

In this tutorial, you learned how to integrate a select element to display a list of videos in a React project. You implemented state to store the user's selection and control the video player accordingly. Additionally, you identified and resolved potential sources of errors and optimized the user interface for a more appealing presentation.