Get div's offsetTop positions in React

You may be encouraged to use the Element.getBoundingClientRect() method to get the top offset of your element. This method provides the full offset values (left, top, right, bottom, width, height) of your element in the viewport.

Check the John Resig's post describing how helpful this method is.


I do realize that the author asks question in relation to a class-based component, however I think it's worth mentioning that as of React 16.8.0 (February 6, 2019) you can take advantage of hooks in function-based components.

Example code:

import { useRef } from 'react'

function Component() {
  const inputRef = useRef()

  return (
    <input ref={inputRef} />
    <div
      onScroll={() => {
        const { offsetTop } = inputRef.current
        ...
      }}
    >
  )
}

Eugene's answer uses the correct function to get the data, but for posterity I'd like to spell out exactly how to use it in React v0.14+ (according to this answer):

  import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
  //...
  componentDidMount() {
    var rect = ReactDOM.findDOMNode(this)
      .getBoundingClientRect()
  }

Is working for me perfectly, and I'm using the data to scroll to the top of the new component that just mounted.