If you want to contact a wider audience, you will probably go for both Google’s (Android) and Apple’s (iOS) platforms while developing your app. Is it more beneficial to create a separate app for each one of them? Or a cross-platform app that will cover two OS-es at once?
To resolve this multiple-choice problem, you can choose to React Native. With this framework, you can include both platforms with a shared codebase.
React Native
It’s an open-source framework for mobile application development. The idea behind React Native is to apply JavaScript to write cross-platform native mobile applications for Android and iOS, using declarative components to create mobile UI.
Plus, applications built with it are no different from Android and iOS native apps in terms of mobile performance.
Why use React Native?
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You can create your app fast
Just like React, React Native uses components to create mobile UI. And as it’s a JavaScript framework, it’s easier for frontend developers easy with React development to study how to develop mobile apps with its native counterpart.
If you intend to develop an application for both iOS and Android, it will take a far shorter time to produce a project with React Native. Using Java and Swift/Objective-C, you would have to develop two separate apps. With React Native, even 95% of the codebase can be shared, which indicates you can drastically cut time to market, without falls in code quality.
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Excellent mobile performance
Mobile applications developed with React Native are not web applications, but standalone native apps, just like the ones built with Java, Swift or Objective-C.
It implies that you can use the framework to create mobile apps that are no distinct from Android or iOS apps in terms of performance. This involves using the device’s hardware, working in the offline mode, third-party plugin support and mobile UI.
While hybrid or mobile web apps don’t offer performance matching native apps, it’s not the case with React Native.
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Use of native code
While you can develop full native mobile apps using React Native, you can still use other, platform-specific languages including Swift, Objective-C or Java.
A probability to blend React Native with other programming languages appears inconvenient. E.g., if you have to add third-party services to your app, that is drafted in other languages. In programming, this technique is called bridging.
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Community-driven
React Native is essentially community-driven. This is a good thing, as developers can find lots of advice and examples in places such as the GitHub React Native Community, a specific forum for developers, and the Reactiflux Chat to immediately find answers to an inherent difficulty.
Oftentimes, developers upload their code online, which can be then adjusted and used in a variety of cases. Such code can speed up development significantly, encourage new solutions or help to resolve difficulties developers may encounter.
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Trusted by big companies
Well, it proved to be effective for companies like Facebook and Instagram, Airbnb or Uber Eats. As millions of users visit these apps every day, the framework determined to offer much-needed performance, scalability, and maintainability. These apps work as evidence that you can happily implement this framework to create mobile applications reaching large audiences, for a diversity of ideas.
