Correct way to pass useRef hook to ref property - reactjs

Question

I'm not sure how to formulate the question less vaguely, but it's about pass-by-value and pass-by-reference cases in react. And Hooks.
I am using gsap to animate a div slide-in and out is the context for this, but I'm going to guess that what the ref is used for shouldn't matter.
So, this works fine, even though this is a more class-component-typical way of passing a ref as i understand it:
const RootNavigation = () => {
var navbar = useRef();
const myTween = new TimelineLite({ paused: true });
const animate = () => {
myTween.to(navbar, 0.07, { x: "100" }).play();
};
return(
<div className="nav-main" ref={div => (navbar = div)}> // <<<<<<<<<< pass as a callback
...
</div>
)}
And this elicits a "TypeError: Cannot add property _gsap, object is not extensible" error, even though this is how the React Hooks guide would have me do it:
const RootNavigation = () => {
var navbar = useRef();
const myTween = new TimelineLite({ paused: true });
const animate = () => {
myTween.to(navbar, 0.07, { x: "100" }).play();
};
return(
<div className="nav-main" ref={navbar}> //<<<<<<<<<<<<< not passing a callback
...
</div>
)}
Could somebody explain to me what's going on here or even toss a boy a link to where it's already been explained? I'm sure some sort of Dan character has written about it somewhere, i'm just not sure what to google. Thank you!

Answer 1

In the first example you aren't using a ref, you are reassigning navbar through the ref callback so navbar is the DOM element.
It's the same as
let navbar = null;
return <div ref={node => (navbar = node)} />
In the second example you are using the ref object which is an object with a current property that holds the DOM element
const navbar = useRef(null)
return <div ref={navbar} />
navbar is now
{ current: the DOM element }
So you are passing the object into myTween.to() instead of the DOM element inside navbar.current
Now in the second example gsap is trying to extend the ref object itself and not the DOM element.
Why do we get the TypeError: Cannot add property _gsap, object is not extensible`?
If you look at the source code of useRef you will see on line 891
if (__DEV__) {
Object.seal(ref);
}
that React is sealing the ref object and JavaScript will throw an error when we try to extend it using Object.defineProperty() which is probably what gsap is doing.
The solution for using a ref will be to pass ref.current into tween.to()
const RootNavigation = () => {
const navbar = useRef()
const myTween = new TimelineLite({ paused: true });
const animate = () => {
myTween.to(navbar.current, 0.07, { x: "100" }).play()
}
return (
<div className="nav-main" ref={navbar}>
...
</div>
)
}