What is useRef hook in React?

The useRef hook is a useful tool for managing references to DOM elements in your React components.

To understand what the useRef hook does, it's helpful to know a little bit about how React works under the hood. When you create a React component, it creates a virtual DOM (Document Object Model) representation of the component's elements. When the component's state or props change, React compares the new virtual DOM to the old one and determines which elements have changed. It then updates the actual DOM with the necessary changes, minimizing the number of DOM manipulation operations that are required.

The useRef hook allows you to create a reference to a DOM element that persists across multiple renders of a component. This can be useful if you need to access the value of an input field, for example, or if you need to manipulate a DOM element directly.

Here's an example of how you might use the useRef hook in a simple React component:

import { useRef, useEffect } from 'react';

function MyComponent() {
  // create a ref to store the input element
  const inputEl = useRef(null);

  // focus the input when the component mounts
  useEffect(() => {
    inputEl.current.focus();
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      <input ref={inputEl} />
    </div>
  );
}

In this example, we create a ref using the useRef hook and assign it to the inputEl variable. We then pass the ref to the ref attribute of the input element. When the component mounts, the useEffect hook is called and we use the current property of the ref to focus the input field.

It's important to note that the useRef hook returns a mutable object, so you can update its properties as needed.

In summary, the useRef hook is a useful tool for managing references to DOM elements in your React components. It allows you to access and manipulate DOM elements directly, and the reference created by the hook persists across multiple renders of a component.

Thank you for reading! See you again soon.

Please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter.

You can visit my Portfolio to check out the projects I have worked on.