Is it possible to provide external access to the component's methods in a functional component (to give 'handles' outside)?

In React functional components, you can provide external access to component methods using forwardRef and useImperativeHandle.

This allows you to "pass through" a ref and define which methods or properties will be accessible from outside.

Example:

import React, { useImperativeHandle, forwardRef, useState } from 'react';

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

  useImperativeHandle(ref, () => ({
    increment() {
      setCount(c => c + 1);
    },
    reset() {
      setCount(0);
    }
  }));

  return <div>Count: {count}</div>;
});

// Usage
// const ref = React.createRef();
// <MyComponent ref={ref} />
// ref.current.increment();

Thus, external code can call the increment and reset methods of the component.