react-native

What is react-native?

React Native is an open-source mobile application framework created by Facebook. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Web, and UWP by enabling developers to use React along with native platform capabilities. It allows for the development of mobile apps using JavaScript and React, offering a rich mobile UI library and tools to deliver a native app experience.

What are react-native's main functionalities?

UI Components

React Native provides a set of built-in core components like View, Text, and Image that you can use to build your app's UI. These components are pre-styled and ready to use, making it easy to develop complex UIs.

import { View, Text } from 'react-native';

function HelloWorldApp() {
  return (
    <View style={{ flex: 1, justifyContent: 'center', alignItems: 'center' }}>
      <Text>Hello, world!</Text>
    </View>
  );
}

Native Modules

Native Modules allow you to write modules in native code that can be called from JavaScript. This is useful for accessing platform-specific functionality that is not covered by the built-in React Native components.

import { NativeModules } from 'react-native';
const { CalendarModule } = NativeModules;

CalendarModule.createCalendarEvent('testName', 'testLocation');

Navigation

Navigation is essential for mobile apps. React Native can integrate with libraries like React Navigation to provide a way to navigate between screens.

import { NavigationContainer } from '@react-navigation/native';
import { createStackNavigator } from '@react-navigation/stack';

const Stack = createStackNavigator();

function App() {
  return (
    <NavigationContainer>
      <Stack.Navigator initialRouteName='Home'>
        <Stack.Screen name='Home' component={HomeScreen} />
        <Stack.Screen name='Profile' component={ProfileScreen} />
      </Stack.Navigator>
    </NavigationContainer>
  );
}

Other packages similar to react-native

flutter

Flutter is Google's UI toolkit for crafting beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. It is similar to React Native but uses Dart instead of JavaScript. Flutter provides its own widgets, which are drawn by the framework's own graphics engine.

ionic

Ionic is a popular framework for building hybrid mobile applications using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It differs from React Native as it focuses on web technologies and uses Cordova or Capacitor to access native device features.

nativescript

NativeScript is an open-source framework for developing truly native mobile applications using JavaScript, TypeScript, Vue.js, or Angular. It provides direct access to native APIs and performance similar to React Native, but it allows for a broader choice of frameworks for building the UI.

README

React Native

Learn once, write anywhere:
Build mobile apps with React.

Getting Started · Learn the Basics · Showcase · Contribute · Community · Support

React Native brings React's declarative UI framework to iOS and Android. With React Native, you use native UI controls and have full access to the native platform.

• Declarative. React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Declarative views make your code more predictable and easier to debug.
• Component-Based. Build encapsulated components that manage their state, then compose them to make complex UIs.
• Developer Velocity. See local changes in seconds. Changes to JavaScript code can be live reloaded without rebuilding the native app.
• Portability. Reuse code across iOS, Android, and other platforms.

React Native is developed and supported by many companies and individual core contributors. Find out more in our ecosystem overview.

Contents

• Requirements
• Building your first React Native app
• Documentation
• Upgrading
• How to Contribute
• Code of Conduct
• License

📋 Requirements

React Native apps may target iOS 13.4 and Android 5.0 (API 21) or newer. You may use Windows, macOS, or Linux as your development operating system, though building and running iOS apps is limited to macOS. Tools like Expo can be used to work around this.

🎉 Building your first React Native app

Follow the Getting Started guide. The recommended way to install React Native depends on your project. Here you can find short guides for the most common scenarios:

• Trying out React Native
• Creating a New Application
• Adding React Native to an Existing Application

📖 Documentation

The full documentation for React Native can be found on our website.

The React Native documentation discusses components, APIs, and topics that are specific to React Native. For further documentation on the React API that is shared between React Native and React DOM, refer to the React documentation.

The source for the React Native documentation and website is hosted on a separate repo, @facebook/react-native-website.

🚀 Upgrading

Upgrading to new versions of React Native may give you access to more APIs, views, developer tools, and other goodies. See the Upgrading Guide for instructions.

React Native releases are discussed in this discussion repo.

👏 How to Contribute

The main purpose of this repository is to continue evolving React Native core. We want to make contributing to this project as easy and transparent as possible, and we are grateful to the community for contributing bug fixes and improvements. Read below to learn how you can take part in improving React Native.

Code of Conduct

Facebook has adopted a Code of Conduct that we expect project participants to adhere to. Please read the full text so that you can understand what actions will and will not be tolerated.

Contributing Guide

Read our Contributing Guide to learn about our development process, how to propose bugfixes and improvements, and how to build and test your changes to React Native.

Open Source Roadmap

You can learn more about our vision for React Native in the Roadmap.

Good First Issues

We have a list of good first issues that contain bugs which have a relatively limited scope. This is a great place to get started, gain experience, and get familiar with our contribution process.

Discussions

Larger discussions and proposals are discussed in @react-native-community/discussions-and-proposals.

📄 License

React Native is MIT licensed, as found in the LICENSE file.

React Native documentation is Creative Commons licensed, as found in the LICENSE-docs file.