React - Uncontrolled Component (DOM State)

About

An uncontrolled component is a component such as form where the state is handled by the DOM itself (not react)

Usage

if:

• you need to write an very difficult event handler (for every way your data can change)
• you are converting a preexisting codebase to React,
• you are integrating a React application with a non-React library.

Example

with a input where a ref is used to get form values from the DOM.

class NameForm extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.handleSubmit = this.handleSubmit.bind(this);
    this.input = React.createRef();
  }

  handleSubmit(event) {
    console.log('A name was submitted: ' + this.input.current.value);
    event.preventDefault();
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <form onSubmit={this.handleSubmit}>
        <label>
          Name:
          <input type="text" ref={this.input} />
        </label>
        <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
      </form>
    );
  }
}

ReactDOM.render(
  <NameForm />,
  document.getElementById('root')
);

<div id="root"></div>

Documentation / Reference

• uncontrolled components