Uncontrolled Component

An uncontrolled component is similar to a traditional HTML form input element. You can get the value of the input by accessing the reference to the input.

import { useRef } from "react";

const Uncontrolled = () => {
  const inputRef = useRef(null);

  const handleSubmit = (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    console.log(inputRef.current.value);
  };

  return (
    <form>
      <input type="text" ref={inputRef} />
      <button onClick={handleSubmit}>Submit</button>
    </form>
  );
};

export default Uncontrolled;

Controlled Component

On the other hand, we have a controlled component. Rather than accessing the value of the input through the reference of the element, we can store the value in React state.

import { useState } from "react";

const Controlled = () => {
  const [inputText, setInputText] = useState("");

  const handleSubmit = (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    console.log(inputText);
  };

  return (
    <form>
      <input
        type="text"
        value={inputText}
        onChange={(e) => setInputText(e.target.value)}
      />
      <button onClick={handleSubmit}>Submit</button>
    </form>
  );
};

export default Controlled;