If you are a React developer and want to build your React apps faster and more robustly, this course is for you. Learn to integrate TypeScript with React, boost your productivity, and create apps that are easier to maintain.

In this course, you will learn how to utilize TypeScript’s sophisticated type system to make React development faster and your code more readable. You will learn how to create component props, state, and events that are strongly-typed, allowing you to quickly understand what you can pass and helping you avoid mistakes.

Lastly, you will set up React projects with TypeScript. First, you will learn how to do this with the Create React App tool, then how to create a React and TypeScript project with Webpack and Babel.

Using TypeScript with React

## Understanding `createRef`

In this lesson, we are going to implement the `Search` component we implemented in the last lesson as a class component. Below is a first attempt:

```
class Search extends React.Component {
  private input = React.useRef<HTMLInputElement>(null);
  
  componentDidMount() {
    if (this.input.current) {
      this.input.current.focus();
    }
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <form>
        <input ref={this.input} type="type" />
      </form>
    );
  }
}
```

What is wrong with this implementation?

# Understanding `createRef`

In this lesson, we are going to implement the `Search` component we implemented in the last lesson as a class component. Below is a first attempt:

```
class Search extends React.Component {
  private input = React.useRef<HTMLInputElement>(null);
  
  componentDidMount() {
    if (this.input.current) {
      this.input.current.focus();
    }
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <form>
        <input ref={this.input} type="type" />
      </form>
    );
  }
}
```

What is wrong with this implementation?

In this lesson, we learn how to get a strongly-typed reference to an element in a class component.

Why TypeScript?

Using basic types

Creating types

Working with generic types

Creating strongly-typed function component props

Creating strongly-typed function component state

Creating strongly-typed class components

Creating strongly-typed component events and event handlers

Creating strongly-typed context

Creating strongly-typed refs

Creating React projects with TypeScript using Create React App

Creating a React and TypeScript project manually

Putting everything together

Creating strongly-typed refs in class components

Understanding `createRef` #