react-ref-composer

This package provides a simple of combining several React refs into a single ref that can passed to a single component or DOM node. See React issue #13029 for more details.

This is most useful when you want to keep a ref to a node inside your component and also forward it outside using React.forwardRef or pass to a library such as react-beautiful-dnd.

Both React hooks and class components are supported.

Hooks

useRefComposer is a hook for composing refs. Usage example:

``jsx
import { useRefComposer } from 'react-ref-composer'

export const MyComponent = React.forwardRef((props, outerRef) => {
const innerRef = useRef()
const composeRefs = useRefComposer()

return


})
`

Here composeRef is a function that you can call with any number of refs. Both object refs and callback refs are supported. The function returns a single "combined" callback ref.

Make sure to always call composeRef with the same number of arguments. In cases when conditional passing of a ref is required you can pass any falsy (undefined, null, 0, "" or false) value instead to temporary "turn off" the ref, e.g.:
`jsx
... ref={composeRefs(ref1, a && b && ref2)}
`

Class components

Class components work very similarly, just use createRefComposer instead:

`js
import { createRefComposer } from 'react-ref-composer'

export class MyComponent {
constructor(props) {
super(props)
this.composeRefs = createRefComposer()
}

render() {
return


}
}
`

Same rules for composeRef as above apply.

Why another library?

Why create another library? The main problem with existing libraries, including compose-react-refs, is that none of them handle changing only one of the passed refs correctly. Case in point:

`jsx
function MyComponent(){
const composeRefs = useRefComposer()
const ref1 = useCallback(div => console.log('ref1', div), [])
const ref2 = useCallback(div => console.log('ref2', div), [])
const ref3 = useCallback(div => console.log('ref3', div), [])
const [flag, setFlag] = useState(true)

function onSwitch() {
console.log('switching')
setFlag(f => !f)
}

return


}
`

This is what the expected output looks like when the user clicks the button:
`jsx
ref1