Book Image

Getting Started with React Native

Book Image

Getting Started with React Native

Overview of this book

React Native is a game-changing approach to hybrid mobile development. Web developers can leverage their existing skills to write mobile applications in JavaScript that are truly native without using cross-compilation or web views. These applications have all of the advantages of those written in Objective-C or Java, combined with the rapid development cycle that JavaScript developers are accustomed to. Web developers who want to develop native mobile applications face a high barrier to entry, because they are forced to learn platform-specific languages and frameworks. Numerous hybrid technologies have tried to simplify this process, but have failed to achieve the performance and appearance that users expect. This book will show you all the advantages of true native development that React Native has without the steep learning curve, leveraging the knowledge you already have. We do this by getting you up and running quickly with a sample application. Next, we’ll introduce you to the fundamentals of creating components and explain how React Native works under the hood. Once you have established a solid foundation, you will dive headfirst into developing a real-world application from start to finish. Along the way, we will demonstrate how to create multiple screens and navigate between them,use layout and style native UI components, and access native APIs such as local storage and geolocation. Finally, we tackle the advanced topic of Native modules, which demonstrates that there are truly no limits to what you can do with React Native.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Generating the Android APK


Building the Android Application Package (APK) is a bit more cryptic than releasing for iOS. There are a few steps that we need to follow before we generate the static bundle, like we did in iOS:

  1. First, we need to generate a key that we can use to sign our application using keytool. Navigate to the android/app folder in a terminal and run this command:

    $ keytool -genkey -v -keystore my-release-key.keystore -alias my-key-alias -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000
    [Storing my-release-key.keystore]
    

    Note

    Note that this is a private file and should never be shared with anyone. Keep it somewhere safe!

  2. Next we have a few configuration files to update. Up a level in the android/ directory open gradle.properties and add these four lines, replacing YOUR_KEY_PASSWORD with the password you used for keytool:

    MYAPP_RELEASE_STORE_FILE=my-release-key.keystore MYAPP_RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS=my-key-alias MYAPP_RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD=YOUR_KEY_PASSWORD
    MYAPP_RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD= YOUR_KEY_PASSWORD...