March 13, 2023

Fine-tuning refs with useImperativeHandle

Hey there!

React is a powerful UI library that provides developers with a great developer experience (DX) through its declarative approach to building user interfaces. This approach abstracts away the complexity of manipulating DOM nodes, making it easier to build UIs. However, there are times when you need to access the DOM nodes managed by React, such as when you need to focus on a node or measure its size. Unfortunately, there is no built-in way to do this with React.

This is where refs come in. The useRef API provided by React allows you to pass refs to a DOM node, which gives you access to that node. You can then perform actions or manipulate the node via the native JavaScript DOM API. Additionally, React provides the useImperativeHandle API, which lets you customize or expose only a subset of methods for that node.

So, in this article, we will be looking at how refs allow you to manipulate DOM nodes, how you can fine-tune them with useImperativeHandle, and some gotchas that you need to take care of when working with this hook.

Continue reading here! - Fine-tuning refs with useImperativeHandle

Thanks,

- Prateek