What is React Native?

React Native is a JavaScript framework for writing real, natively rendering mobile applications for iOS and Android. It’s based on React, Facebook’s JavaScript library for building user interfaces, but instead of targeting the browser, it targets mobile platforms. In other words: web developers can now write mobile applications that look and feel truly “native,” all from the comfort of a JavaScript library that we already know and love. Plus, because most of the code you write can be shared between platforms, React Native makes it easy to simultaneously develop for both Android and iOS.

Similar to React for the Web, React Native applications are written using a mixture of JavaScript and XML-sequel markup, known as JSX. Then, under the hood, the React Native “bridge” invokes the native rendering APIs in Objective-C (for iOS) or Java (for Android). Thus, your application will render using real mobile UI components, not web views, and will look and feel like any other mobile application. React Native also exposes JavaScript interfaces for platform APIs, so your React Native apps can access platform features like the phone camera, or the user’s location.

React Native currently supports both iOS and Android, and has the potential to expand to future platforms as well.

Advantages of React Native

• The fact that React Native actually renders using its host platform’s standard rendering APIs enables it to stand out from most existing methods of cross-platform application development, like Cordova or Ionic.
• React Native actually translates your markup to real, native UI elements, leveraging existing means of rendering views on whatever platform you are working with.

Risks and Drawbacks

• Some features on iOS and Android still aren’t supported, and the community is still discovering best practices.
• Because React Native introduces another layer to your project, it can also make debugging hairier, especially at the intersection of React and the host platform.

Summary

React Native is an exciting framework that enables web developers to create robust mobile applications using their existing JavaScript knowledge. It offers faster mobile development, and more efficient code sharing across iOS, Android, and the Web, without sacrificing the end user’s experience or application quality. The tradeoff is that it’s new, and still a work in progress. If your team can handle the uncertainty that comes with working with a new technology and wants to develop mobile applications for more than just one platform, you should be looking at React Native.

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