Getting a reference to a React Component using useRef hook

You actually need to use the forwardRef method when dealing with functional components. Additionally, there is not a particular clean and easy way to retrieve the state-value of a functional-child component. But here is what you can do:

import React, { useRef, useState, useImperativeHandle } from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";

function App() {
  const referenceToMyComponent = useRef(null);

  return (
    <div className="App">
      <button
        onClick={() => {
          if (referenceToMyComponent.current) {
            console.log(referenceToMyComponent.current.returnStateValue());
          }
        }}
      >
        Print State reference
      </button>
      <MyComponent ref={referenceToMyComponent} />
    </div>
  );
}

const MyComponent = React.forwardRef((props, ref) => {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  const returnStateValue = () => {
    return count;
  };

  useImperativeHandle(ref, () => {
    return {
      returnStateValue: returnStateValue
    };
  });

  return (
    <div>
      <h4>Counter: {count}</h4>
      <button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>+1</button>
    </div>
  );
});

Essentially the key-points are the forwardRef, useImperativeHandle, and returnStateValue.

The forwardRef helps us pass a ref coming from a parent to the functional child-component.

The useImperativeHandle hook helps us bind the ref to the instance of the component, we still cannot extract the state-value from the child, but we can access functions defined in the child that would return the state-value anyway.

The returnStateValue function simply returns the state from inside the child-component. We can now access that function via our ref by using referenceToMyComponent.current.returnStateValue()

See working sandbox: https://codesandbox.io/s/dreamy-wiles-xst65