ReactJS, find elements by classname in a React Component

Question

I\'ve a React component. Some elements will be inserted through the children. Some of these elements will have a specific classname. How can I get a list of these DOM nodes

Answer 1

You can use ReactDOM.findDOMNode. Even though the documentation encourage using ref, let's see how it works:

findDOMNode()

ReactDOM.findDOMNode(component)

If this component has been mounted into the DOM, this returns the corresponding native browser DOM element. This method is useful for reading values out of the DOM, such as form field values and performing DOM measurements. In most cases, you can attach a ref to the DOM node and avoid using findDOMNode at all.

When a component renders to null or false, findDOMNode returns null. When a component renders to a string, findDOMNode returns a text DOM node containing that value. As of React 16, a component may return a fragment with multiple children, in which case findDOMNode will return the DOM node corresponding to the first non-empty child.

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Note: findDOMNode is an escape hatch used to access the underlying DOM node. In most cases, use of this escape hatch is discouraged because it pierces the component abstraction. findDOMNode only works on mounted components (that is, components that have been placed in the DOM). If you try to call this on a component that has not been mounted yet (like calling findDOMNode() in render() on a component that has yet to be created) an exception will be thrown. findDOMNode cannot be used on functional components.

Also let's look at the ref, which is recommended:

Adding a Ref to a Class Component

When the ref attribute is used on a custom component declared as a class, the ref callback receives the mounted instance of the component as its argument. For example, if we wanted to wrap the CustomTextInput above to simulate it being clicked immediately after mounting:

class AutoFocusTextInput extends React.Component {
    componentDidMount() {
      this.textInput.focusTextInput();
    }

    render() {
      return (
         { this.textInput = input; }} />
      );
    }
}

Note that this only works if CustomTextInput is declared as a class:

class CustomTextInput extends React.Component {
  // ...
}