Angular: nativeElement is undefined on ViewChild

Question

I want to access the DOM of a component using ViewChild. But when I try to access the nativeElement property, it's undefined.

Below is the snippet.

import { Component, ViewChild, AfterViewInit } from '@angular/core'; import { AlertComponent } from './alert.component';  @Component({     selector: 'app-root',     template: `     <app-alert #alert>My alert</app-alert>       <button (click)="showAlert()">Show Alert</button>` }) export class AppComponent implements AfterViewInit {   @ViewChild('alert') alert;    showAlert() {     console.log('alert (showalert)', this.alert.nativeElement);     this.alert.show();   }    ngAfterViewInit() {     console.log('alert (afterviewinit)', this.alert.nativeElement);   } } 

Please take a look at the plunk.

Answer 1

If you want to get a reference of an element that hosts a component or directive you need to specify that you want the element instead of the component or directive

@ViewChild('alert', { read: ElementRef }) alert:ElementRef; 

See also angular 2 / typescript : get hold of an element in the template

In your case I guess you need two different @ViewChild() one for the component reference to be able to access the show() method, and a 2nd one to be able to access DOM attributes.

Plunker example