Rushabh PatelWe crave it all, don’t we? A short development cycle, fast deployment, and good app performances. But do we think about creating apps that provide superior user experience, or apps that can perform on more than one platform and are faster to develop?
What is React Native?
React native is an app framework developed by Face book. With the help of this framework, you aren’t developing a “mobile web app” or a “hybrid app.” Furthermore, React Native allows you to develop real mobile apps, apps that are created by using either Swift or Java. It employs the same fundamental UI building blocks as used in both iOS and Android. However, these building blocks are put together with the help of both React Native and JavaScript.
Facebook’s React native user interface (UI) design framework is considered to be one of the front lines of this technology. React Native is like a partnership between everything you’re used to from React on the internet and the perks of native applications. Additionally, It offers you the speed, precision, and the feel of native applications while holding on to what you are used to from React on the web, for example, fast development cycles and declarative self-contained user interface (UI) components.
How is React Native different from React?
React native is not a carbon copy of React. React native is seemingly a custom reinterring for React, like React DOM, that can be found on the WEB. To begin with React Native, you need to know the basic concepts of React, like JSX, components, state, and props. If you are familiar with React, you still need to have a specific idea about things related to React native, like the native components. Consequently, React Native also provides access to the features these platforms offer, apart from just transforming React codes to work on iOS and Android.
How does React Native work?
If you have an idea about React for the web, you’ll fit in perfectly with React Native. If you are accustomed to writing apps in Java or Swift, you will not be bothered by many of React Native’s components.
React is like a JavaScript library for developing user interfaces, focusing on the view portion of your app. That means when you write a React Native app, your view code will feature components of React, which are some small pieces of code showing how a portion of your app is supposed to look based on some set of input data.
Benefits
- Android and iOS have different codebases, so most businesses often have the need to hire engineers to work on both platforms. With, React Native you don’t have to go through the hassle of building the same application for iOS and Android, separately. However, React Native helps its developers reuse the common logic algorithm across the web, mobile, and other operating systems.
- Reloading apps instead of recompiling them, you can reload your whole application instantly. You’re given two options: Live Reloading will automatically reload the app every time you edit and save one of its files. Hot Reloading only reloads the file you just edited, not the entire file.
- Use native code when you require it. It’s extremely simple to go back to using native codes if there’s a need to optimize some aspects of your application. Moreover, it has become even easier to build a part of your app in React Native, and parts of your app using the native code directly, this is how Facebook operates.
- No need to overhaul the old app. All you need to do is to add the React Native user interface components into your existing app’s code, without having to rewrite the whole code again. Or with a plugin, if there is one, reuse the Cordova-based code if your current app was built using Cordova and Ionic. Nevertheless, this provides significant advantages for businesses that are looking to expand an existing app without facing the need to overhaul it.
- Native app developments are usually inefficient, they take more time to deploy, and give less room for developer productivity. React Native is all about high speed, fidelity, and agility of web app development along with effective processing and best user experience to the hybrid space, to provide your users with the best native app experience.
Conclusion
React Native cannot be written off as an introduction to native applications for web developers. It is a very powerful tool, but not ideally meant for every solution. Bear in mind, complex apps require more native solutions which in turn require more native developers. Otherwise, this could lead to a slowing down of the development process. However, React Native is considered to be the best approach for applications with less complex user interfaces. You will get an effective efficient, truly native app having spent lesser resources.
