React Native’s base set of components are amazing! <View> enforcing flexbox and defaulting to {flexDirection: 'column', position: 'relative'}? So smart.

It is such a successful set of components and constraints that web developers (like me) are…

ref is one of two special props in React — the other being key — because it isn't really a prop. Instead of being passed in to the associated component as a this.props.ref, React snatches it up and uses it to associate a reference to the component's instance or DOM node.