[RFC] Refs naming standard

[zombieJ]

📋 RFC

Summary

Align the ref API naming standard. All ref should provider nativeElement as dom of the root.

Basic example

const ref = useRef();

useEffect(() => {
  ref.current.scrollTo({ key: 'bamboo' });
  console.log(ref.current.nativeElement);
}, []);

<Table ref={ref} />

Motivation

Current ref in antd is miss with operation and dom element. It's not extendable if already used for dom or operation.

Detailed

Use Proxy to handle the ref logic for exist component but new object for not support ref component yet.

Drawbacks

Not affect for current usage.

Adoption strategy

Apply in minor version.

[babur001]

Any other viable use cases for accessing table's ref?

If it is just scroll or get components heigh or position, i can use just use simple div wrapper.

const ref = useRef<HtmlDivElement>();

useEffect(() => {
  ref.current.scrollTo({ key: 'bamboo' });
  console.log(ref.current.nativeElement);
}, []);

<div ref={ref}> 
   <Table />
</div> 

[zombieJ]

key should work with component logic. So you call in native element will not work. For Table, we've follow the RFC to extends with scrollTo function:
#45245

[gregor-mueller]

Apply in minor version.

This broke a lot of apps for us (providing a UI library based on antd). We use ref internally in our-lib and antd is a peer dependency, so consumers can have newer (minor and patch!) versions. We got a bit lucky, using the library ourselves and hitting the breaking change within our own app. So the UI lib has the following package.json:

{
  "name": "our-lib",
  "peerDependencies": {
    "antd": "^5.10.0"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "antd": "^5.10.0"
  }
}

The app using our library has the following package.json:

{
  "name": "some-app",
  "dependencies": {
    "our-lib": "latest"
  }
}

When doing a simple npm i it got served antd@5.11.0 so the app crashed when trying to render the table with no easy way for them finding out, what was wrong.

We fixed this now, updating our-lib but the error occurred for others without us noticing.
Changes like this should always be in major versions only, IMHO.