Managing focus, text selection, or media playback.
Triggering imperative animations.
Integrating with third-party DOM libraries.
Avoid using refs for anything that can be done declaratively.
...
Don’t Overuse Refs:
Your first inclination may be to use refs to “make things happen” in your app. If this is the case, take a moment and think more critically about where state should be owned in the component hierarchy. Often, it becomes clear that the proper place to “own” that state is at a higher level in the hierarchy. See the Lifting State Up guide for examples of this."
If you are using refs to talk to your child inputs you've made a mistake. React talks about RAISING THE STATE - for complex forms you need to make all of your inputs controlled, you need to manage the state at the highest level. You need to push those changes down to child components, none of them should have their own state.
React gives you some nice tools to handle most common use cases but you can still make less than optimal decisions.
"There are a few good use cases for refs:
...Don’t Overuse Refs:
If you are using refs to talk to your child inputs you've made a mistake. React talks about RAISING THE STATE - for complex forms you need to make all of your inputs controlled, you need to manage the state at the highest level. You need to push those changes down to child components, none of them should have their own state.React gives you some nice tools to handle most common use cases but you can still make less than optimal decisions.