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Learn React Hooks for Frontend Development

Understanding the useRef Hook Design

Explore the design and behavior of React's useRef hook to manage persistent mutable objects across renders. Understand how useRef differs from useState by holding values without causing component updates, making it ideal for referencing DOM elements or mutable data without affecting UI reactivity.

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Overview of the useRef hook

The useRef hook in React is used to create a mutable object that persists across renders of a functional component.

React provides a useRef hook to create a ref:

const Title = () => {
  // Create a ref using useRef
  const ref = useRef(null);
  // Render an h1 element with the ref attached
  return <h1 ref={ref}>Hello World</h1>;
}
Functional component using useRef to create a ref for an h1 element

The useRef hook takes an initial value as its only input argument and returns a ref object, putting that initial value under the current property.

There's no additional data structure required for useRef, other than the basic fiber hook support:

useRef design
useRef design

Just like useState and useEffect uses state to store the state and the effect, useRef uses state to store the ref. Next, let's take a look at how it's implemented.

Internal design of

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