What is React Native?

React Native is an open-source, cross-platform mobile app development framework created and maintained by Meta (Facebook’s parent company). The framework is built on top of the popular front-end JavaScript library, React. According to their showcase, React Native is used by thousands of mobile apps and many well-known brands, including Facebook, Microsoft, Shopify, Walmart, and more.1?

Why Choose React Native?

Learn Once, Write Anywhere

React Native boasts with its slogan “Learn Once, Write Anywhere,” and it certainly lives up to the hype. Using JavaScript, developers can write apps in one language and deploy them to both iOS and Android devices. Most native files that developers maintain will be those required to build the native projects, and the rest will be JavaScript files shared between the platforms. This enables a single team of developers to write and maintain the iOS and Android user interface and underlying business logic. Companies often choose React Native for this benefit alone due to the cost savings that are incurred. Also, according to Stack Overflow’s 2022 Developer survey, JavaScript was the most commonly used programming language across all respondents for the tenth year in a row. This bodes well for recruiting engineers with JavaScript experience. (2)

Performance & Reliability

Under the hood, React Native translates the JavaScript UI components to native iOS and Android components. This allows the applications to run with the same performance and reliability as fully native apps. By using the native components, users will experience the same UI controls they’ve come to know and love on their operating system of choice. Keyboards, item pickers, alerts, system permission dialogs, and more all feel at home on your users’ devices.?

Community

If you’ve ever found yourself endlessly Googling a code issue, you understand the importance of a good developer community. The good news is that the React Native developer community is massive. The large community of React Native developers allows for an easier debugging experience, well-written documentation, and plenty of node packages which allow developers to build feature-rich, native experiences.?

Speed

React Native also offers a best-in-class developer experience. The framework ships with a JavaScript bundler called Metro which allows developers to see changes to their application in near real time. Because of this, writing user interface code and iterating on business logic is incredibly fast.?

Functionality

And if all of that was not enough, Expo fills in the gaps. Expo is an ecosystem of tools that allows you to develop cross-platform mobile apps with ease. Their Expo SDK offers a massive amount of native functionality, including packages for maps, camera, geolocation, contacts, and more. The documentation is thorough, and the free tools are especially good for prototyping. With Expo and the availability of countless other React Native packages, developers can effectively cover all native device capabilities.?

Potential Downsides to React Native

Though there are many positive aspects to developing with React Native, there are also a few downsides. Let’s unpack them.?

Total Control

With any cross-platform framework, you sacrifice complete native control of the project. This is not unique to React Native, but it is something to be called out. Truly native experiences, such as App Clips, Watch Apps, and Live Activities still require native code.

Dependence on Updates

Developers will often be dependent on React Native updates to use the latest-and-greatest features, possibly waiting until a node package has been released to support the feature.??

Upgrades between versions can often feel challenging and tedious and React Native is no exception. To manage dependencies, React Native uses Node Package Manager, or NPM. NPM allows developers to download open-source, third party libraries and UI components to be used in their projects. When it comes to upgrading React Native, developers must use tools such as the React Native Upgrade Helper built by the community and RNX Kit’s align-deps package to update the native files and ensure all packages are compatible with one another. However, if your project is large and well established, that list of dependencies will be long and fixing compatibility issues between them is not necessarily trivial.?

Third-Party Functionality

Though React Native has a robust set of core components, there will often be times where the native functionality you desire is not implemented, and thus, you must rely on third party node packages. The option exists to write your own native module, which acts as a JavaScript interface between native iOS and Android code. But again, this requires knowledge of the native platforms.?

The fact is, developing a mobile app with a cross-platform framework still requires knowledge of the native development environment. Xcode and Android studio are a regular necessity. Concepts such as code-signing, entitlements, permissions, CocoaPods, Gradle, keystores, and manifests cannot be left behind. This may make hiring a little more challenging. If you’re only hiring JavaScript developers, there will be a large learning curve for the mobile development environment.?

Are you considering whether React is right for your needs? Do you need help deciding which mobile app development framework is best for your business? We’re experts in more than just React Native! Reach out if you’d like to discuss your needs or if you’re looking for support. We’d love to hear from you!