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What is React Native

Introduction to React Native

React Native is a JavaScript framework created by Facebook for writing real mobile applications especially for iOS and Android. It comes out of React, Facebook’s JavaScript library used for building user interfaces but it mainly focuses on Mobile Platforms. Now the web developers can write mobile applications all from the comfort of a JavaScript library that they already know. Most of the codes now can be shared between platforms, React Native makes it easy to develop for both Android and iOS simultaneously. Its applications are written with a combination of JavaScript and JSX. This calls the native rendering APIs in Objective-C (for iOS) or Java (for Android). Now, the applications will use real mobile UI components, unlike the review. It also supports JavaScript interfaces for platform APIs, so the apps can access platform features like the phone camera, or the user’s location.

Reasons to Use React Native

Let’s go through some of the reasons which actually make us choose to React Native over other frameworks for developing Mobile Apps.

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  • Every CEO wants to attain the highest possible efficiency with less effort. React Native helps in using the same code for deployment on both iOS and Android platforms. Businesses become more time and cost-efficient by shortening the development cycle. It can be possible to minimize the development efforts to almost 50% without facing any trade-off between either quality or productivity.
  • React Natives uses the ReactJS UI library developed by Facebook for UIs and apps. It transfers Virtual DOM, Better app performance, and easier programming processes from ReactJS. This framework also supports the live reload feature, which is not in the case of other native frameworks. Live Reload helps in viewing the latest code changes and moreover If two screens are opened simultaneously, the first one shows the code, while the second one shows the result of the code.
  • Now a Javascript developer with skills on native UI elements, design patterns, and APIs can easily develop mobile applications. React Native provides good support from a community of developers. Whenever problems arise, JavaScript and native enthusiasts provides support to fix them.
  • It works for mobile UI building. A mobile app built on React Native is smoother and is much faster than a classic one.
  • A single code base is deployed to multiple mobile operating systems. Components can be reused anytime at any level in the code without even rewriting it.
  • React Native codes are reusable. A single update works for two platforms. It eases bug detection in the codes. The developers can easily understand the project and even if they were not a part of the project earlier, they can understand the codes and take it as a base to work further. It makes it more flexible and easier to introduce new updates. The work of QA engineers also becomes quite easier and they can complete their tasks in lesser hours with relevant test cases.
  • 3rd party plugins can easily work even without specific WebView Functions. The plugins can be linked with the native module using the Framework. Plugins can be linked with an app smoothly and eventually it will be faster and lesser memory will be required.
  • It is being happily adopted by the developers as the Developers are looking to upgrade their skills in such technologies which won’t get disappeared in a couple of years.

Facebook is also looking ahead for huge investments to help React Native grow in the market.

Advantages

The advantages of using React Native over any other Native Framework are defined as below:

  1. It has a community-driven environment, through which one can seek help from native developers and experts over his/her project or any framework related issue.
  2. It provides the facility of maximum code reuse, that means one can use same code for the development of mobile application in Android as well as in iOS and because of this factor one can save both time and money in application development.
  3. It is very fast in nature because of the use of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) as compared to other native platforms that are more inclined towards CPU (Central Processing Unit).
  4. It also offers simplification of the process of data binding which offers more stability of mobile applications as compared to other native platforms that make this more reliable platform.
  5. React Native offers huge support for Third-party plugins because these developers get a variety of options which includes both JavaScript modules and native.
  6. It offers a simple user interface because this is commonly known as an open-source JavaScript library rather being a platform.
  7. It provides support to Live Reloading and Hot Reloading, which means the developers can see the outcome instantly after making the changes in the code.

With all of the above advantages, we can infer the below benefits of React Native”

  • Better Performance as compared to other Native.
  • Reusability of codes
  • Cost Efficiency
  • Support for Third-Party Plugins
  • Strong support from the Community
  • More stable apps creation than competitors
  • Simple and Easy User Interface to work on
  • The libraries are more handy to use.

Conclusion

As we can see, React Native being a more popular framework as compared to the other Native frameworks has been a hype in the Mobile App Development Market which can help in simplifying and making this industry flourish. It has been a great help in saving time and money by minimizing the efforts and team scaling. With time we have seen that the Apps built on React Native works far more efficient and agile. Apps run more smoothly and fast loading speed can be attained with less memory usage. For worst-case scenarios, we can always trust the support of the community. For the time being, it is going to stay in the market and help the developers ease their work and develop faster, interactive apps.

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This is a guide to What is React Native? Here we discuss the introduction, reasons to use React Native along with the advantages. You can also go through our other related articles to learn more–

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