React Key Concepts - Second Edition

7

Portals and Refs

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

• Use direct DOM element access to interact with elements
• Expose the functions and data of your components to other components
• Control the position of rendered JSX elements in the DOM

Introduction

React.js is all about building user interfaces, and, in the context of this book, it’s specifically about building web user interfaces.

Web user interfaces are ultimately all about the Document Object Model (DOM). You can use JavaScript to read or manipulate the DOM. This is what allows you to build interactive websites: you can add, remove, or edit DOM elements after a page has been loaded. This can be used to add or remove overlay windows or ...