React Native is a library for creating mobile applications using familiar web technologies without sacrificing performance or the look and feel typically associated with fully native applications. It is built on top of Facebook’s open source JavaScript library, React, and indeed, iOS and Android applications created using the library are primarily written in JavaScript. Because one does not need to learn new languages, ecosystems, and best practices for each platform they work on, React Native is pushing the boundaries of what is possible for React developers.
In this book, we will look at the fundamental concepts of React and React Native, as well as the libraries and tools within the React Native ecosystem. We will also work towards the more practical goal of creating a complete React Native application. Finally, we’ll dig into useful and complex React Native concepts such as animation, navigation, native modules, testing and performance analysis. Upon turning over the last page of this book, you’ll be armed with the knowledge to create polished, sophisticated mobile applications using React Native.
Chapter 1, Building a Foundation in React, In order to work effectively in React Native, you must first understand React. This chapter explains the motivation behind React and teaches you how to think in React.
Chapter 2, Saying Hello World in React Native, contains two primary topics. First, we’ll review how React Native works and compare it to other popular mobile development options. Then, we’ll switch gears and focus on configuring your computer to build your first React Native project for iOS.
Chapter 3, Styling and Layout in React Native, React Native borrows many concepts from the web development world, including some of the best parts of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It also deliberately avoids some of CSS’s less desirable qualities. This chapter explains how to style React Native apps and how to use Flexbox to layout components.
Chapter 4, Starting our Project with React Native Components, React Native includes many powerful components and APIs. This chapter demonstrates how to use many of these as we begin to build our news reader app, called Readly.
Chapter 5, Flux and Redux, ... The React community has largely eschewed the Model View Controller pattern in favor of a unidirectional data flow pattern called Flux. In this chapter, we’ll help you think in Flux and explain how to leverage a popular Flux implementation known as Redux.
Chapter 6, Integrating with the NYT API and Redux, builds upon what we learned in this chapter. In order to bring our Readly app to life, we’ll implement Redux and Redux middleware as a means of managing our data and communicating with the New York Times API.
Chapter 7, Navigation & Advanced APIs, Navigation in React Native has been a long journey resulting in an abundance of navigation options. But which should you choose? This chapter will make sense of these options. We’ll then apply experimental navigation components along with other advanced React Native APIs to our project.
Chapter 8, Animation and Gestures in React Native, React Native offers two primary ways of creating fluid animations. This chapter will explain how to apply each of these along with touch gesture support to build out an on boarding experience for our Readly app.
Chapter 9, Refactoring for Android, React Native makes cross platform development simple. However, configuring your computer to actually build for Android is a bit less than simple. This chapter will walk you through, step by step, how to install and configure all the tools necessary for Android development. We’ll then revisit our project, refactoring it to both work and feel like a first class Android app.
Chapter 10, Using and Writing Native Modules, One of the most amazing parts of React Native is that it doesn’t limit you to the components and APIs that come packaged with the framework. If you want your app to do something else, you can either bridge custom native code to React Native or include other third-party libraries. This chapter adds additional capabilities to our project by exploring how to create custom native code written in Objective C for iOS and Java for Android.
Chapter 11, Preparing for Production, Discovering the root cause of bug or performance problem can be a real chore. In this chapter we’ll introduce Jest, a testing framework along with other tools for uncovering pesky performance problems. Finally, we’ll show you how to bundle your apps so you can ship them to the iOS and Android stores.
Chapter 12, React Native Tools & Resources, React Native is praised for its awesome developer experience and cross platform support. But can we take React Native even further? In this final chapter, we’ll show off some tools that can improve upon how you build React Native apps. Then we’ll explore a few React Native projects that allow us to extend platform support to the web, macOS, and even Windows.
While we will add Android support to our project in later chapters, the majority of this book focuses on iOS development. In order to develop for iOS, you must have access to an Apple Mac computer capable of running Xcode 7 or later. Xcode is only necessary for building and testing React Native apps. You’re welcome to edit your code in any editor or IDE of your choosing.
In addition to Xcode, React Native requires a few other tools. These include Homebrew, Node.js (6.5.0 or later), npm (3.10.3 or later), Watchman, the React Native CLI, and Google Chrome for debugging. We’ll explain what all these tools are and how to install them in Chapter 2, Saying Hello World in React Native.
In Chapter 9, Refactoring for Android, we’ll update our project so it can run on both platforms. Android has its own set of software requirements including the Java Development Kit (JDK 1.8 or later) and Android Studio. Once again, we’ll walk you through how to install and configure these tools in Chapter 9, Refactoring for Android.
Finally, in Chapter 12, React Native Tools & Resources, we’ll evaluate software that can aid your React Native workflow and allow you to build React Native apps for even more platforms. All of these installations are completely optional. However, it’s worth noting that the React Native plugin for Universal Windows Platform will require a computer or virtual machine running Windows 10 and Visual Studio 2015 Community.
It’s expected the reader possess a strong understanding of JavaScript and is familiar with ECMAScript 2015 (ES2015 or ES6). Code samples in this book will heavily leverage ES2015 features such as classes, arrow functions, destructuring, and spreading. Familiarity with React, mobile development, HTML, and CSS will aid in your understanding but are not a requirement.
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