`props.children` is `UNMOUNTED` following update

[yang]

I'm confused by the following behavior. In this example, I have a Wrapper that takes a children prop. When it first renders, clicking mounted? gives us MOUNTED which seems right. But after clicking update to re-render everything, clicking mounted? gives us UNMOUNTED.

For some real-use-case context, this gave me errors when accessing this.props.children.getDOMNode() to pass to a third-party library for displaying a pop-up menu around the given node. The given child was not responsible for knowing about the popup logic; instead, it's the sole purpose of Wrapper to show a contextual menu at the location of the given component.

Pasting this into a Live JSX Editor on http://facebook.github.io/react/ should work:

/** @jsx React.DOM */
var Wrapper = React.createClass({
  mounted: function() { alert(this.props.children._lifeCycleState); },
  showPopup: function() { alert(this.props.children.getDOMNode()); },
  render: function() {
    return <div>
      {this.props.children}
      <button onClick={this.mounted}>mounted?</button>
      <button onClick={this.props.onUpdate}>update</button>
      <button onClick={this.showPopup}>show popup</button>
    </div>;
  }
});
var App = React.createClass({
  handleUpdate: function() { this.forceUpdate(); },
  render: function() {
    return (
      <Wrapper onUpdate={this.handleUpdate}>
        <div>hello world</div>
      </Wrapper>
    );
  }
});
React.renderComponent(<App />, mountNode);

I believe I'm seeing the same behavior in general when accessing props.children of any ref.

[sophiebits]

As the underscore in front of its name suggests, _lifeCycleState is private to React and you should not use it in your own code.

There's no current way to get a reference to the mounted children instance, but you can use a ref if you wrap them in another div:

var Wrapper = React.createClass({
  showPopup: function() { alert(this.refs.childWrapper.getDOMNode()); },
  render: function() {
    return <div>
      <div ref="childWrapper">
        {this.props.children}
      </div>
      <button onClick={this.props.onUpdate}>update</button>
      <button onClick={this.showPopup}>show popup</button>
    </div>;
  }
});

Hope that helps.

[yang]

I'm not actually using _lifeCycleState—it's just in this example to pinpoint the problem.

Inserting an intermediate div unfortunately violates assumptions (e.g. CSS layout, doesn't work for SVGs, etc.).

[sophiebits]

Sorry, there's no way right now to get a ref to children that are passed in. After #1373 it may be possible to do so using cloneWithProps.

[yang]

Thanks, I had been following that.

Actually, following up on your mentioning cloneWithProps and some further experimentation—can't you already get it via the following? At least, seems to work for me (example in CoffeeScript):

Wrapper = React.createClass
  render: ->
    R.div {},
      cloneWithProps @props.children, ref: 'handle'
      R.button {onClick: => console.log @refs.handle}, 'inspect'

Perhaps there are pitfalls to using cloneWithProps that aren't documented?

Also, some random other experimentation suggests that at least one other way to actually get the DOM node using a pass-through component without the extra div.

PassThrough = React.createClass
  render: -> @props.children

Wrapper = React.createClass
  render: ->
    R.div {},
      PassThrough {ref: 'handle'}, @props.children
      R.button {onClick: => console.log @refs.handle.getDOMNode()}, 'inspect DOM'

[sophiebits]

Ah yes, you're right on both counts.