Learning React: A Hands-On Guide to Building Web Applications Using React and Redux, Second edition

12

Accessing DOM Elements in React

Sometimes you want to access properties and methods on an HTML element directly. In our React-colored world, where JSX represents everything that is good and pure about markup, why would you ever want to deal directly with the horribleness that is HTML? As you will find out (if you haven’t already), in many cases, dealing with HTML elements through the JavaScript DOM API directly is easier than fiddling with “the React way” of doing things. To highlight one such situation, take a look at the Colorizer example in Figure 12.1.

Figure 12.1 Colorizer example.

If you have access to a browser, you can view it ...