react-multi-ref

This is a small utility to make it easy for React components to deal with refs on multiple dynamically created elements.

import { useState } from "react";
import MultiRef from "react-multi-ref";

function Foo(props) {
  const [itemRefs] = useState(() => new MultiRef());

  // Make a 5-item array of divs with keys 0,1,2,3,4
  const items = new Array(5).fill(null).map((n, i) => (
    <div key={i}>
      <input type="text" ref={itemRefs.ref(i)} />
    </div>
  ));

  function onClick() {
    const parts = [];
    itemRefs.map.forEach((input) => {
      parts.push(input.value);
    });
    alert("all input values: " + parts.join(", "));
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={onClick}>Alert</button>
      {items}
    </div>
  );
}

The multiRef.map property is a Map object containing entries where the key is the parameter passed to multiRef.ref(key) and the value is the ref element given by React. You can retrieve a specific element by key from the map by using multiRef.map.get(key).

Subsequent calls to multiRef.ref(key) in later renders with the same key will return the same value so that React knows that it doesn't need to update the ref.

Class Component Example

MultiRef is usable as long as you can create an instance of it and persist the instance for the lifetime of a component. In a function component, you can do this with useState (not useMemo, because React is allowed to reset its memory at any time), and in a class component, you can do this by keeping the instance as a property on the class.

import React from "react";
import MultiRef from "react-multi-ref";

class Foo extends React.Component {
  #itemRefs = new MultiRef();

  render() {
    // Make a 5-item array of divs with keys 0,1,2,3,4
    const items = new Array(5).fill(null).map((n, i) => (
      <div key={i}>
        <input type="text" ref={this.#itemRefs.ref(i)} />
      </div>
    ));
    return (
      <div>
        <button onClick={this.#onClick}>Alert</button>
        {items}
      </div>
    );
  }

  #onClick = () => {
    const parts = [];
    this.#itemRefs.map.forEach((input) => {
      parts.push(input.value);
    });
    alert("all input values: " + parts.join(", "));
  };
}

Types

Both TypeScript and Flow type definitions for this module are included! The type definitions won't require any configuration to use.