React Native

Everyone has a smartphone these days and uses it on a daily basis, moreover, the mobile app market is growing all the time. Most companies offering web services have a mobile application and it is crucial to stay on top of trends. Currently, two mobile systems dominate the market: Android and iOS. Until some time ago, in order to write a mobile application for both of these systems, we needed developers who knew programming languages such as Java, Objective-C or Swift. This carried huge production costs and the process of creating such an application took a long time. Fortunately, time has brought us solutions such as native applications, these are apps based on technologies such as html, css and javascript. React native is precisely a library that allows us to create a native application that will run on both mobile systems.

What is React native?

React native is a library created by the developers of Facebook, which allows us to create native, cross-platform mobile applications, as well as TV applications. The library is based on the programming language javascript and uses JSX, which allows us to write HTML and XML inside javascript. The biggest advantage of React native is undoubtedly the creation of applications for multiple platforms using the same code.

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What services use React native?

React native is the most popular library for building native applications. Such applications as facebook, instagram, airbnb, uber eats, shopify, discord and many more have been created with its help.

React vs React native

Both libraries are based on javascript, using JSX. React and React native are based on components that are reusable, and can have their own state, which is rendered and updated by React accordingly. The two libraries are related, but serve completely different purposes. React is designed for building web applications, while React native is used for developing mobile applications. In React native we also don't experience HTML syntax, but use special components such as View, Text and TextInput.

How does React native work?

React native is based on 3 parts: the main thread, the javascript thread and the tools that are used to communicate the so-called bridge, which is between the main thread and the javascript thread. The main thread, or native part, is responsible for displaying the relevant controls and directly handling the actions that the user has performed. The javascript thread is responsible for business logic, functionality and how the user interface should look.

Benefits of using React native

As I mentioned earlier, without a doubt the biggest advantage of using React native is writing applications for multiple platforms at the same time. Using the same code for different platforms allows us to develop quickly, maintain the code easily and cheaply, and add new developers to the project more efficiently.

React native also makes use of so-called 'hot reloading', which allows developers to preview changes to code live, without having to refresh anything.

Another plus of React native is undoubtedly the large community, which creates additional libraries and helps develop the library.

Disadvantages of using React native

No framework or library is perfect and React native also has disadvantages. Currently, the biggest drawback is the lack of native API and SDK support. React native does not have ready-made modules that allow you to access the APIs of the Android platform, or iOS.

Writing one code for several platforms also brings some difficulties. Android and iOS use different design rules by this we are forced to many if instructions along with separate code.