reactjs / reactjs/react.dev

[Bug]: Update Documentation: Ref Example No Longer Applicable in React 19+

Open
#7,341 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug: unconfirmed
Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
11.8k
Forks
7.9k
Avg merge
1d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
11

Description

Summary

The section in the documentation about "Accessing another component’s DOM nodes" provides an example where a ref cannot be directly applied to a custom component (such as ) to access its DOM node. However, this behavior has changed in React 19, and refs can now be directly assigned to custom components. This section should be updated or removed as it no longer accurately reflects the current behavior in React.

Page

https://react.dev/learn/manipulating-the-dom-with-refs#accessing-another-components-dom-nodes

Details

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Open the linked React documentation page and locate the “Accessing another component’s DOM nodes” section. Review the example against React 19 ref behavior, then update or remove the outdated explanation so the page accurately describes current behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
javascript, react
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
55/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.