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Legacy Refs vs Ref Callbacks

Reactjs provides a way to get references to dom elements that react is rendering through jsx. Previously, it was through what are now legacy refs:

componentWillUpdate() {
  this.refs.thing.tagName == "div";
}

render() {
  return (
    <div ref="thing"/>
  );
}

Where you can assign an element an identifier and react would keep a refs hash up to date with references to the dom for that element.

The react docs say this about the previous system.

We advise against it because string refs have some issues, are considered legacy, and are likely to be removed in one of the future releases.

The new system uses callbacks

render() {
  return (
    <div ref={(div) => { console.log('tag name:', div.tagName); }} />
  );
}

This callback is called when the component mounts with a reference to the dom element as an argument. Importantly, when the component unmounts the callback is called again but this time with null as an argument.

See More #react TILs
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