What is React Native and How does React Native work?

What is React Native?

React Native may be a popular JavaScript-based mobile app framework that permits you to create natively-rendered mobile apps for Android and iOS. The framework allows you to create an application for various platforms by using an equivalent codebase.

React Native was first released by Facebook as an open-source project in 2015. In only a few years, it became one of the highest solutions used for mobile development. React Native development is employed to power a number of the world's leading mobile apps, including Instagram, Facebook, and Skype.

There are several reasons behind React to Native's global success.

Firstly, by using React Native, companies can create code on just one occasion and use it to power both their iOS and Android apps. This translates to large time and resource savings.

React Native was built to support React – a JavaScript library, which was already hugely popular when the mobile framework was released. We discuss the differences between React and React Native intimately further during this section.

How does React Native work?

Now that we've discussed cross-platform development, let's take a glance at the mechanics of React Native, and the way it's different from anything we've seen before.

Don't worry if you're not a technical person – we're getting to explain this in layman terms.

As mentioned earlier, React Native is written with a mix of JavaScript and JSX, a special markup code resemblant of XML. The framework has the power to speak with both realms – JavaScript-based threads and existent, native app threads.

How does this communication work? 

React Native uses a so-called "bridge". While JavaScript and Native threads are written in completely different languages, it's the bridge feature that creates bidirectional communication possible.

This means that – if you have already got a native iOS or Android app – you'll still use its components or shift to React Native development.

What makes React Native unique?

The difference between React Native and other cross-platform development solutions (for example, Cordova and PhoneGap) is that React Native doesn't render WebViews in its code. It runs on actual, native views and components. This is often one among the explanations for React Native's spectacular success.

Benefits of React Native

We've discussed the products built using React Native, so let's move onto the benefits of React Native development and why you ought to choose it as an answer to create your mobile app.

Code reusability – cross-platform development

Being able to reuse code is that the biggest advantage of React Native, and it indicates that apps can run effectively on multiple platforms – which are some things that CEOs and merchandise Owners truly appreciate. they will integrate 90% of the native framework for reusing the code for both operational systems.

Another great piece of the story is that it's possible to use the online application code for mobile app development if they're both using React Native. It also accelerates development time because it includes pre-developed components, which are included within the open-source library.

Cost efficiency

Another advantage of React Native development is bigger cost efficiency. As mentioned earlier, this is often because developers are ready to use an equivalent code to create applications for iOS and Android. It means you don't need to hire two separate iOS and Android dev teams to finalize your project; a little team is enough to create it. The value of developing apps in React Native is far less than apps built using languages that don't leave cross-platform app development.

Simple UI

React Native development uses React JavaScript to create the app's interface, which makes it more responsive and faster with reduced load time, leading to overall better user experience. Because of the reactive UI and component-based approach, the framework is ideal for building apps with both simple and sophisticated designs.

Fast refresh

Fast refresh allows developers to run the app while updating it to new versions and modifying the UI. Changes are visible immediately, and therefore the developer is spared from rebuilding the whole app. This results in two significant benefits: time savings – as programmers save time on the compilation and increased productivity – since they don't lose any state while incorporating changes into the app.

Fast applications

Some claim that React Native code may need a detrimental effect on an app's performance. albeit JavaScript won't run as fast as native code, this difference is unnoticeable to the human eye. To further prove it, we decided to run a test comparing two versions of an easy application written in React Native and Swift – both achieved similar performance results.

Large developer community

React Native is an open-source JavaScript platform that permits developers to contribute their knowledge to the framework's development, which is freely accessible to all or any. If any developer experiences a drag while developing an app, then they will address the community for support (as of mid-2020, there are nearly 50,000 active contributors to the React Native tag in Stack Overflow). there'll always be someone who'll be ready to help them resolve their issues – this also features a positive impact on improving coding skills.