How to access a child's state in React

I have the following structure:

FormEditor - holds multiple instances of FieldEditor FieldEditor - edits a field of the form and saving various values about it in its state

When a button is clicked within FormEditor, I want to be able to collect information about the fields from all FieldEditor components, information that's in their state, and have it all within FormEditor.

I considered storing the information about the fields outside of FieldEditor's state and put it in FormEditor's state instead. However, that would require FormEditor to listen to each of its FieldEditor components as they change and store their information in its state.

Can't I just access the children's state instead? Is it ideal?

Solution 1:

Just before I go into detail about how you can access the state of a child component, please make sure to read Markus-ipse's answer regarding a better solution to handle this particular scenario.

If you do indeed wish to access the state of a component's children, you can assign a property called ref to each child. There are now two ways to implement references: Using React.createRef() and callback refs.

Using React.createRef()

This is currently the recommended way to use references as of React 16.3 (See the documentation for more information). If you're using an earlier version then see below regarding callback references.

You'll need to create a new reference in the constructor of your parent component and then assign it to a child via the ref attribute.

class FormEditor extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.FieldEditor1 = React.createRef();
  }
  render() {
    return <FieldEditor ref={this.FieldEditor1} />;
  }
}

In order to access this kind of ref, you'll need to use:

const currentFieldEditor1 = this.FieldEditor1.current;

This will return an instance of the mounted component so you can then use currentFieldEditor1.state to access the state.

Just a quick note to say that if you use these references on a DOM node instead of a component (e.g. <div ref={this.divRef} />) then this.divRef.current will return the underlying DOM element instead of a component instance.

Callback Refs

This property takes a callback function that is passed a reference to the attached component. This callback is executed immediately after the component is mounted or unmounted.

For example:

<FieldEditor
    ref={(fieldEditor1) => {this.fieldEditor1 = fieldEditor1;}
    {...props}
/>

In these examples the reference is stored on the parent component. To call this component in your code, you can use:

this.fieldEditor1

and then use this.fieldEditor1.state to get the state.

One thing to note, make sure your child component has rendered before you try to access it ^_^

As above, if you use these references on a DOM node instead of a component (e.g. <div ref={(divRef) => {this.myDiv = divRef;}} />) then this.divRef will return the underlying DOM element instead of a component instance.

Further Information

If you want to read more about React's ref property, check out this page from Facebook.

Make sure you read the "Don't Overuse Refs" section that says that you shouldn't use the child's state to "make things happen".

Solution 2:

If you already have an onChange handler for the individual FieldEditors I don't see why you couldn't just move the state up to the FormEditor component and just pass down a callback from there to the FieldEditors that will update the parent state. That seems like a more React-y way to do it, to me.

Something along the line of this perhaps:

const FieldEditor = ({ value, onChange, id }) => {
  const handleChange = event => {
    const text = event.target.value;
    onChange(id, text);
  };

  return (
    <div className="field-editor">
      <input onChange={handleChange} value={value} />
    </div>
  );
};

const FormEditor = props => {
  const [values, setValues] = useState({});
  const handleFieldChange = (fieldId, value) => {
    setValues({ ...values, [fieldId]: value });
  };

  const fields = props.fields.map(field => (
    <FieldEditor
      key={field}
      id={field}
      onChange={handleFieldChange}
      value={values[field]}
    />
  ));

  return (
    <div>
      {fields}
      <pre>{JSON.stringify(values, null, 2)}</pre>
    </div>
  );
};

// To add the ability to dynamically add/remove fields, keep the list in state
const App = () => {
  const fields = ["field1", "field2", "anotherField"];

  return <FormEditor fields={fields} />;
};

Original - pre-hooks version:

class FieldEditor extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.handleChange = this.handleChange.bind(this);
  }

  handleChange(event) {
    const text = event.target.value;
    this.props.onChange(this.props.id, text);
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div className="field-editor">
        <input onChange={this.handleChange} value={this.props.value} />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

class FormEditor extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.state = {};

    this.handleFieldChange = this.handleFieldChange.bind(this);
  }

  handleFieldChange(fieldId, value) {
    this.setState({ [fieldId]: value });
  }

  render() {
    const fields = this.props.fields.map(field => (
      <FieldEditor
        key={field}
        id={field}
        onChange={this.handleFieldChange}
        value={this.state[field]}
      />
    ));

    return (
      <div>
        {fields}
        <div>{JSON.stringify(this.state)}</div>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

// Convert to a class component and add the ability to dynamically add/remove fields by having it in state
const App = () => {
  const fields = ["field1", "field2", "anotherField"];

  return <FormEditor fields={fields} />;
};

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.body);

Solution 3:

As the previous answers said, try to move the state to a top component and modify the state through callbacks passed to its children.

In case that you really need to access to a child state that is declared as a functional component (hooks) you can declare a ref in the parent component, and then pass it as a ref attribute to the child, but you need to use React.forwardRef and then the hook useImperativeHandle to declare a function you can call in the parent component.

Take a look at the following example:

const Parent = () => {
    const myRef = useRef();
    return <Child ref={myRef} />;
}

const Child = React.forwardRef((props, ref) => {
    const [myState, setMyState] = useState('This is my state!');
    useImperativeHandle(ref, () => ({getMyState: () => {return myState}}), [myState]);
})

Then you should be able to get myState in the Parent component by calling:

myRef.current.getMyState();