What is React Native?
React Native is a JavaScript framework for building native mobile applications for iOS and Android. It leverages React, Facebook’s JavaScript library for UIs, adapting it to mobile platforms. With shared code between iOS and Android, React Native allows web developers to create native-feeling apps using familiar tools. Using JSX and a React Native “bridge,” apps invoke native rendering APIs (Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android), ensuring genuine mobile UIs without webviews. It provides JavaScript interfaces for platform APIs like camera and location, supporting cross-platform development and production-ready apps used by companies like Facebook and TaskRabbit.
What are the advantages of React Native?
React Native sets itself apart from traditional cross-platform development methods like Cordova or Ionic by rendering using the host platform’s standard APIs instead of webviews, which can lead to performance issues and limitations in accessing native UI elements. By translating markup directly into native UI components, React Native ensures apps maintain native look and feel across platforms while optimizing performance by operating separately from the main UI thread. This approach, similar to React for the web, allows developers familiar with React to create high-performance mobile applications using native UI libraries, enhancing both developer experience and cross-platform development capabilities.