javascript - How to get the value of an input field using ReactJS?

Question

I have the following React component:

export default class MyComponent extends React.Component {

    onSubmit(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        var title = this.title;
        console.log(title);
    }

    render(){
        return (
            ...
            <form className="form-horizontal">
                ...
                <input type="text" className="form-control" ref={(c) => this.title = c} name="title" />
                ...
            </form>
            ...
            <button type="button" onClick={this.onSubmit} className="btn">Save</button>
            ...
        );
    }

};

The console is giving me undefined - any ideas what's wrong with this code?

Answer 1

There are three answers here, depending on the version of React you're (forced to) work(ing) with, and whether you want to use hooks.

First things first:

It's important to understand how React works, so you can do things properly (protip: it's is super worth running through the React tutorial exercise on the React website. It's well written, and covers all the basics in a way that actually explains how to do things). "Properly" here means that you're writing an application interface that happens to be rendered in a browser; all the interface work happens in React, not in "what you're used to if you're writing a web page" (this is why React apps are "apps", not "web pages").

React applications are rendered based off of two things:

1. the component's properties as declared by whichever parent creates an instance of that component, which the parent can modify throughout its lifecycle, and
2. the component's own internal state, which it can modify itself throughout its own lifecycle.

What you're expressly not doing when you use React is generating HTML elements and then using those: when you tell React to use an <input>, for instance, you are not creating an HTML input element, you are telling React to create a React input object that happens to render as an HTML input element, and whose event handling looks at, but is not controlled by, the HTML element's input events.

When using React, what you're doing is generating application UI elements that present the user with (often manipulable) data, with user interaction changing the Component's state, which may cause a rerender of part of your application interface to reflect the new state. In this model, the state is always the final authority, not "whatever UI library is used to render it", which on the web is the browser's DOM. The DOM is almost an afterthought in this programming model: it's just the particular UI framework that React happens to be using.

So in the case of an input element, the logic is:

1. You type in the input element,
2. nothing happens to your input element yet, the event got intercepted by React and killed off immediately,
3. React forwards the event to the function you've set up for event handling,
4. that function may schedule a state update,
5. if it does, React runs that state update (asynchronously!) and will trigger a render call after the update, but only if the state update changed the state.
6. only after this render has taken place will the UI show that you "typed a letter".

All of that happens in a matter of milliseconds, if not less, so it looks like you typed into the input element in the same way you're used to from "just using an input element on a page", but that's absolutely not what happened.

So, with that said, on to how to get values from elements in React:

React 15 and below, with ES5

To do things properly, your component has a state value, which is shown via an input field, and we can update it by making that UI element send change events back into the component:

var Component = React.createClass({
  getInitialState: function() {
    return {
      inputValue: ''
    };
  },

  render: function() {
    return (
      //...
      <input value={this.state.inputValue} onChange={this.updateInputValue}/>
      //...
    );
  },

  updateInputValue: function(evt) {
    this.setState({
      inputValue: evt.target.value
    });
  }
});

So we tell React to use the updateInputValue function to handle the user interaction, use setState to schedule the state update, and the fact that render taps into this.state.inputValue means that when it rerenders after updating the state, the user will see the update text based on what they typed.

addendum based on comments

Given that UI inputs represent state values (consider what happens if a user closes their tab midway, and the tab is restored. Should all those values they filled in be restored? If so, that's state). That might make you feel like a large form needs tens or even a hundred input forms, but React is about modeling your UI in a maintainable way: you do not have 100 independent input fields, you have groups of related inputs, so you capture each group in a component and then build up your "master" form as a collection of groups.

MyForm:
  render:
    <PersonalData/>
    <AppPreferences/>
    <ThirdParty/>
     ...

This is also much easier to maintain than a giant single form component. Split up groups into Components with state maintenance, where each component is only responsible for tracking a few input fields at a time.

You may also feel like it's "a hassle" to write out all that code, but that's a false saving: developers-who-are-not-you, including future you, actually benefit greatly from seeing all those inputs hooked up explicitly, because it makes code paths much easier to trace. However, you can always optimize. For instance, you can write a state linker

MyComponent = React.createClass({
  getInitialState() {
    return {
      firstName: this.props.firstName || "",
      lastName: this.props.lastName || "" 
      ...: ...
      ...
    }
  },
  componentWillMount() {
    Object.keys(this.state).forEach(n => {
      let fn = n + 'Changed';
      this[fn] = evt => {
        let update = {};
        update[n] = evt.target.value;
        this.setState(update);
      });
    });
  },
  render: function() {
    return Object.keys(this.state).map(n => {
      <input
        key={n} 
        type="text"
        value={this.state[n]}
        onChange={this[n + 'Changed']}/>
    });
  }
});

Of course, there are improved versions of this, so hit up https://npmjs.com and search for a React state linking solution that you like best. Open Source is mostly about finding what others have already done, and using that instead of writing everything yourself from scratch.

React 16 (and 15.5 transitional) and 'modern' JS

As of React 16 (and soft-starting with 15.5) the createClass call is no longer supported, and class syntax needs to be used. This changes two things: the obvious class syntax, but also the thiscontext binding that createClass can do "for free", so to ensure things still work make sure you're using "fat arrow" notation for this context preserving anonymous functions in onWhatever handlers, such as the onChange we use in the code here:

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.state = {
      inputValue: ''
    };
  }

  render() {
    return (
      //...
      <input value={this.state.inputValue} onChange={evt => this.updateInputValue(evt)}/>
      //...
    );
  },

  updateInputValue(evt) {
    this.setState({
      inputValue: evt.target.value
    });
  }
});

You may also have seen people use bind in their constructor for all their event handling functions, like this:

constructor(props) {
  super(props);
  this.handler = this.handler.bind(this);
  ...
}

render() {
  return (
    ...
    <element onclick={this.handler}/>
    ...
  );
}

Don't do that.

Almost any time you're using bind, the proverbial "you're doing it wrong" applies. Your class already defines the object prototype, and so already defines the instance context. Don't put bind of top of that; use normal event forwarding instead of duplicating all your function calls in the constructor, because that duplication increases your bug surface, and makes it much harder to trace errors because the problem might be in your constructor instead of where you call your code. As well as placing a burden of maintenance on others that you (have or choose) to work with.

Yes, I know the react docs say it's fine. It's not, don't do it.

React 16.8, using function components with hooks

As of React 16.8 the function component (i.e. literally just a function that takes some props as argument can be used as if it's an instance of a component class, without ever writing a class) can also be given state, through the use of hooks.

If you don't need full class code, and a single instance function will do, then you can now use the useState hook to get yourself a single state variable, and its update function, which works roughly the same as the above examples, except without the setState function call:

import { useState } from 'react';

function myFunctionalComponentFunction() {
  const [input, setInput] = useState(''); // '' is the initial state value
  return (
    <div>
    <label>Please specify:</label>
    <input value={input} onInput={e => setInput(e.target.value)}/>
    </div>
  );
}

Previously the unofficial distinction between classes and function components was "function components don't have state", so we can't hide behind that one anymore: the difference between function components and classes components can be found spread over several pages in the very well-written react documentation (no shortcut one liner explanation to conveniently misinterpret for you!) which you should read so that you know what you're doing and can thus know whether you picked the best (whatever that means for you) solution to program yourself out of a problem you're having.