React: img onLoad and Chicken/Egg problem I cannot escape - reactjs

Question

I have a React control that renders a bunch of images. My goal is to avoid the flickering that is caused by an unknown time it takes React to load the images (yes, I know about inline image loading, let's pretend it doesn't exist for a moment)
I have an initialized array in my class:
this.loadedImages = [];
For this purpose I use onLoad in this manner:
render () {
let items = this.props.images.map((value, index) => {
let style = {};
if (this.isImageLoaded(index))
style = value.style;
else
style = {visibility: 'hidden'};
return <img
key={ index }
onClick={ this.onClick }
onLoad={ this.onLoad(index) }
style={ style }
src={ value.image }
alt={ value.alt}/>
});
return (
<div>
{items}
</div>
);
}
}
my onLoad and isImageLoaded look like this:
onLoad = (index) => {
if (!this.isImageLoaded(index)) {
this.loadedImages.push(index);
}
};
isImageLoaded = (index) => {
let isloaded = this.loadedImages.includes(index);
if (isloaded)
console.log(index + " is loaded!");
else
console.log(index + " is NOT loaded ");
return isloaded;
};
The issue is that once my page loads, the images switch from a "not loaded" into a "loaded" mode -- BUT there is only ONE RENDER that occurs before the images are loaded, thus the {visibility: 'hidden'} style remains permanent.
So my page loads without images. Now, if I click my component even once, the images will appear correctly because the component is forced to re-render (since now the images are loaded). BUT there is no option for me to force such a re-draw programmatically from the onLoad function as I'm getting a warning I should not be doing that from render...
My question is: how can I break the chicken/egg problems here and re-render my component once any image completes its loading.

Answer 1

I suggest combining your loadedImages data with the your other image state (as a boolean flag on each) and updating it using setState every time one loads (your headaches are due to this separation and the fact that you are having to manually keep them synchronised).
Then map over the single array of images (including loading state), using something like the src for the key.