ReactJS adding onClick handler into element given an HTML string - html

Question

I'm given an HTML string from an API:
<div><h1>something</h1><img src="something" /></div>
I would like to add an onClick handler onto the img tag. I thought about using regex replace, but it's highly advised against.
I'm new to React... how would you go about solving this problem?
Any links or pointing into the right direction would be highly appreciated!
EDIT
Is there a way to add a listener to all anchor tags in a react friendly way? I'm thinking then I can just check the anchor tag's children, and if there's an image element, then I can run my code block.

Answer 1

I think a more idiomatic React way of doing this would be to refactor this into a component, replete with it's own onClick handler, and then insert your image URL via props. Something like
class MyImg extends React.Component {
onClick() {
// foo
}
render() {
return (
<div onClick={this.onClick}>
<h1>{this.props.foo}</h1>
<img src={this.props.imgSrc} />
</div>
);
}
}

Answer 2

Can you update your API to return JSON instead of HTML? JSON is easier to manipulate and you can create react elements on the fly, for example, let's assume your API returns this:
{
component: 'div',
children: [
{ component: 'h1', text: 'Something here' },
{ component: 'img', src: 'something.jpg' },
],
}
If you have that kind of response is very easy to create React elements at run time, you can also add events when creating these components, for example:
class DynamicContent extends PureComponent {
onImageClick = () => {
// Do something here!
console.log('Testing click!');
}
render() {
const children = response.children;
return React.createElement(response.component, null,
React.createElement(children[0].component, null, children[0].text),
React.createElement(children[1].component, {
...children[1],
onClick: this.onImageClick, // <-- Adds the click event
}),
);
}
}
You might want to create an utility that dynamically walks through the response object and creates all the components that you need.