ReactJS & Google MDL Button onClick not working

Question

I have some JS like below. I find that if I remove mdl-js-layout the onClick of the button works. Otherwise it fails. Why might this be? I have already did componentHandler.upgradeDom()

'use strict';

module.exports = React.createClass({
  componentDidMount: function() {
    console.log('update')
    componentHandler.upgradeDom();
  },

  addExpense: function() {
    console.log('add expense');
  },

  render: function() {
    return (
      <div ref="appLayout" className="mdl-layout mdl-js-layout mdl-layout--fixed-drawer">
        <div className="mdl-layout__drawer">
          <span className="mdl-layout-title">Expenses</span>
          <nav className="mdl-navigation">
            <a className="mdl-navigation__link" href="#">Expenses</a>
            <a className="mdl-navigation__link" href="#">Settings</a>
          </nav>
        </div>

        <main className="mdl-layout__content">
          <div className="page-content">
            <div className="mdl-grid">
              <div className="mdl-cell mdl-cell--12-col">
                <button ref="btnAddExpense" onClick={this.addExpense} className="mdl-button mdl-js-button mdl-button--raised mdl-button--accent">
                  Add Expense
                </button>
              </div>
            </div>
          </div>
        </main>
      </div>
    );
  }
});

If I look into the React debugger tools, I can actually see the onClick is supposed to be bound?

Answer 1

It looks like mdl is not compatible with react, and prevents the click events from the react component from working. Hopefully, this would be fixed in a future update, but until then, you can work around this by manually re-adding the events after mounting the component.

componentDidMount: function() {
  componentHandler.upgradeDom();
  var button = this.refs.btnAddExpense;
  button.addEventListener('click', this.addExpense);
},

Demo