React Native - TextInput focus while onClick Text Label won't work

Question

I just want to make textinput focus easier for more user-friendly application. I try to do when user miss click textinput and click text instead it should focus to textinput.

So I added ref to text as

  <Text ref={"textref"}

and on TextInput

 <TextInput onPress={_onPress => { this.refs.textref.focus() }} 

It worked for 1 word label texts but It didn't worked for long texts. What can I do?

Also it says refs is deprecated is there better way to do it? I find this way shortest and effective but sadly it is deprecated.

Edit: I fixed it.

<Text onPress={() => {this.inputText.focus()}} 
<TextInput ref={input => { this.inputText= input}}   

worked for me.

Answer 1

First, you're trying to focus a Text, but you can focus only TextInput

Then, i suggest you to init your ref in the constructor

constructor(props) {
    super(props)
    
    ...

    this.textInputref = React.createRef()
}

And

<Text onPress={() => this.textInputref.current.focus()}>hello world</Text>

<TextInput ref={this.textInputref} />