String refs are considered legacy

[arogachev]

String refs are used at least in the example in README - https://github.com/igorprado/react-notification-system#using.

Taken from official React documentation - https://reactjs.org/docs/refs-and-the-dom.html#legacy-api-string-refs

Legacy API: String Refs

If you worked with React before, you might be familiar with an older API where the ref attribute is a string, like "textInput", and the DOM node is accessed as this.refs.textInput. We advise against it because string refs have some issues, are considered legacy, and are likely to be removed in one of the future releases. If you’re currently using this.refs.textInput to access refs, we recommend the callback pattern instead.

The recommended way

https://reactjs.org/docs/refs-and-the-dom.html#adding-a-ref-to-a-dom-element

class CustomTextInput extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.focusTextInput = this.focusTextInput.bind(this);
  }

  focusTextInput() {
    // Explicitly focus the text input using the raw DOM API
    this.textInput.focus();
  }

  render() {
    // Use the `ref` callback to store a reference to the text input DOM
    // element in an instance field (for example, this.textInput).
    return (
      <div>
        <input
          type="text"
          ref={(input) => { this.textInput = input; }} />
        <input
          type="button"
          value="Focus the text input"
          onClick={this.focusTextInput}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

[dyst5422]

#144 should address this