Customizing Refs in React with useImperativeHandle

Aug 11, 2023

React, with its plethora of hooks, provides developers with myriad tools to enhance and streamline their development process. Among these hooks, useImperativeHandle stands out, especially when we discuss refs. Let's dive deep into the concept of useImperativeHandle and how it can be used to customize refs.

What is useImperativeHandle?

At its core, useImperativeHandle is a React Hook that lets you customize the instance value that's being exposed when using ref. This comes in handy when you want to expose specific properties or methods of a child component to a parent component.

useImperativeHandle(ref, createHandle, dependencies?)

Parameters Explained:

ref: The reference received from the forwardRef render function.
createHandle: A function that returns the custom ref handle you'd like to expose.
dependencies (optional): Reactive values referenced inside of createHandle. The list should be inline, like [dep1, dep2, dep3].

The hook returns undefined, so it doesn’t produce a value for your component to consume.

Usage of useImperativeHandle

1. Exposing a custom ref handle to the parent component:

By default, React components do not expose their DOM nodes to parent components. But with useImperativeHandle, this behavior can be tailored.

For instance, consider you want to expose only specific methods like focus and scrollIntoView of an <input> element and not the entire DOM node:

import { forwardRef, useRef, useImperativeHandle } from 'react';

const MyInput = forwardRef(function MyInput(props, ref) {
  const inputRef = useRef(null);

  useImperativeHandle(ref, () => {
    return {
      focus( ) {
        inputRef.current.focus();
      },
      scrollIntoView( ) {
        inputRef.current.scrollIntoView();
      },
    };
  }, []);

  return <input {...props} ref={inputRef} />;
});

In the above code, the parent component, when it gets a ref to MyInput, can call focus and scrollIntoView but won't get full access to the <input> DOM node.

2. Exposing your own imperative methods:

The methods you expose needn't necessarily map to DOM methods. They can be tailored to the application's requirement:

import { useRef } from 'react';
import Post from './Post.js';

export default function Page( ) {
  const postRef = useRef(null);

  function handleClick( ) {
    postRef.current.scrollAndFocusAddComment();
  }

  return (
    <>
      <button onClick={handleClick}>
        Write a comment
      </button>
      <Post ref={postRef} />
    </>
  );
}

Here, the Post component exposes a method scrollAndFocusAddComment, which the parent Page component can call.

A Word of Caution

While refs and imperative methods can be powerful, they shouldn't be the go-to for all problems. Refs should be used sparingly, mainly for actions like node scrolling, focusing, animations, etc.

If there's a way to achieve something with props, prioritize that. For instance, rather than using refs to open and close a modal, it’s more React-ish to control its visibility via a prop like isOpen.

Conclusion

useImperativeHandle offers a neat way to customize refs in React. It enables us to expose only the parts of a component we want while keeping the rest encapsulated. However, remember to use it judiciously and in conjunction with other React paradigms to achieve a clean and maintainable codebase.

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