Connect's wrapped component can't be a stateless function

If the component wrapped with connect is a stateless function component, React warns about the internal ref that the wrapper holds with the following message Warning: Stateless function components cannot be given refs (See ref "wrappedInstance" in App created by Connect(App)). Attempts to access this ref will fail.

import { connect } from 'react-redux';
import React from 'react';

export default connect(mapStateToProps)(props => <div />);

Would it be useful to check whether the component is stateless or not to decide when to apply the ref or do we always need it?

[gaearon]

Yes, you can ignore the warning for now.

[mini-eggs]

I ran into something that may be related.

While using connect with a stateless component that had a child component with state (extends React.Component): the child component’s componentWillReceiveProps would never fire on prop change. Instead the child component with state would rerender and it’s componentDidMount would fire again. I ran into this within a create-react-native-app project.

If this is indeed an issue I would be happy to look into it and create a PR, I could also start a branch on the project to easily reproduce this (I’ve since removed the stateless component with connect).