React Hooks are now available in React 16.8. There are 10 different hooks, you can read about them here. When I needed a ref to a dom element yesterday I reached for useRef.
const containerRef = useRef(null);
This isn’t a ref to anything unless you pass the ref to a tag.
return (<div ref={containerRef}></div>);
Now the ref will be assigned a dom element that you can use. In this example I’m using the useEffect hook to execute a side effect after the render takes place. Use the current attribute to access the current dom node.
useEffect(() => { containerRef.current.style = 'background-color: green;' })