Toggle Password Visibility Using React useRef

Introduction

One way to manipulate Document Object Model(DOM) without triggering a re-render of the component in React is to use the useRef hook. In this article, I will use the ref hook to toggle password input visibility.

This article is for React beginner developers with a basic understanding of the React library. The reader will learn how to toggle password field visibility using useRef.

Outline

• Understanding useRef
• Application of useRef
• Toggle password Demo
• Conclusion

Understanding useRef

React documentation defines useRef as a hook that lets you reference a value not needed for rendering. It is a built-in hook used for accessing the DOM. It does not trigger a re-render of the component. UseRef is a top-level component. You can access the value held by useRef using its current property.

Application of useRef

 import React,{useRef} from 'react'; function TogglePassword(){ const inputRef= useRef(initialValue) } 

In the above code example, I imported useRef from React and initialized it with an initial value. The value can be string, int, or object. To access the useRef value, I used its current property as shown below.

const refValue= inputRef.current 

Toggle password Demo

I used uesRef to access the DOM to achieve the toggle password effect. In the code example below, I set the initial value of useRef to null.

import React, { useRef, useState } from "react"; import { FaEyeSlash, FaEye } from "react-icons/fa"; function TogglePassword() { const inputref = useRef(null); const [iconState, setIcon] = useState(false); const handleClick = () => { const inputattr = inputref.current.getAttribute("type"); inputattr === "password" ? inputref.current.setAttribute("type", "text") : inputref.current.setAttribute("type", "password"); iconState ? setIcon(false) : setIcon(true); }; let icon; if (iconState) { icon = <FaEyeSlash />; } else { icon = <FaEye />; } return ( <> <div> <p>Email</p> <input type="text" id="email" /> </div> <div> <p>Password</p> <input ref={inputref} type="password" id="pwd" /> <span onClick={handleClick}>{icon}</span> </div> </> ); } export default TogglePassword; 

In the code above, I initialized the iconState to false using the useState hook to track password visibility. I created a handleClick function to toggle password visibility by listening to a click event on the eye icon. In the JSX of the togglePassword component, I used inputRef to hold the reference to the password input. Next, I used the inputRef.current property to access the input type attribute. If the input type attribute was password, I set the type to 'text' and vice versa using the ternary operator. Then, I toggled iconState to true or false. Next, I declared a variable icon and was assigned an eye component or eye slash component depending on the iconState.

Conclusion

In the article, I demonstrated the usage of useRef and showed how it can access the DOM. Now, the readers should have gained a better understanding of useRef and how to use it to access the DOM.

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