Inferno: string refs support in inferno-compat

[ritz078]

As react supports it for now, inferno-compat should also support it.

[trueadm]

@ritz078 Inferno 0.7 supported string refs but the amount of code to maintain them and the performance problems it brought with it weren't deemed necessary given the relative ease for a user to transition off of them to callback refs. Why? String refs require a constant tracking of parent components and their parents too, as a ref might be a child of a component and thus this makes it awfully sloppy to deal with.

You could totally use something like this: https://github.com/developit/linkref which would not only work in Inferno but also React and Preact. This wouldn't need any hacks etc and would be good on performance.

However, I could hack something in, a bit like how Preact has done it for it's compatibility layer. What are your thoughts?

[ritz078]

I agree that this will have performance issues and even react doesn't encourage this way but I also believe that inferno-compat should be able to run existing code out of the box. That's the point of having this compatibility layer. But I agree that this way of using refs shouldn't be encouraged.

[trueadm]

@ritz078 I almost wish there was an official codemod from FB that auto upgraded string refs to callbacks, would save so much pain in the long run!

[ritz078]

totally agree

[Havunen]

We had string support in core previously and it created a lot of complexity with it... :(

[ritz078]

Whenever someone tries to use inferno compat in a large project , he may not want to make changes to his codebase as far as its supported by React. Maybe this is the reason preact implemented it ?

[Havunen]

yes its valid point. Hopefully we can implement it so that it affects only Inferno-compat package

[ritz078]

Yes. I will never want inferno to support it but inferno-compat should have it.

[trueadm]

@ritz078 I'll try and add it tonight/tomorrow

[trueadm]

Added to dev - https://github.com/trueadm/inferno/commit/74e869b78ce3299dd19deb71a1f99191a25ee85a

[Havunen]

Closing this ticket as its now implemented, crate new issue if problems found with it.

[landabaso]

Is this fix already on npm? I tried both with 1.2.2 and 1.3.0-rc.3 and they both throw:
Uncaught Error: Inferno Error: string "refs" are not supported in Inferno 1.0. Use callback "refs" instead.

Thanks!

[Havunen]

@landabaso you must use createElement API with inferno-compat to be able to use strong refs. Its legacy way of doing it anyway so better to use callbacks