JavaScript is the web’s one of the most used client-side scripting languages. 88.9% of all websites and web apps use JavaScript in one form or another for animations, user interactions, optimizing page load speeds and even for security purposes. In the times of rapid app development, we require better approaches to create interactive web applications, and JavaScript frameworks act as the star delivering bespoke as well as high-quality web applications in less effort. JavaScript has led to an exceptional ecosystem of technologies, frameworks, and libraries. JavaScript Frameworks are the backbone of Web and Mobile applications development and give superpowers to plain HTML and JavaScript. JavaScript Frameworks streamline the entire procedure in a one of a kind form, taking care of the complexities in reference to code structure, maintenance, and design. React Native Framework is one such JavaScript framework.
React Native JavaScript framework is used for composing natively rendering mobile applications for iOS & Android. The React native framework is based on the approach: “Learn once, write anywhere“. React is based on JavaScript code library developed by Facebook & Instagram for building UIs. This JS targets mobile platforms instead of the browsers. Thousands of apps are using React Native, the list comprising of the Fortune 500 companies as well as new start-ups. React Native’s growth and adoption rate is reflecting an exponential progress. As per the research, 1002 contributors committed 7,971 times in 45 branches with 124 releases, and it is the 14th most starred repository on GitHub. Many organizations over the globe have begun creating cross-platform mobile applications using React Native framework such as SoundCloud Pulse, Discovery VR, Facebook Ads Manager, Bit Wallet, Squad, Myntra and many more.
Benefits of React Native Framework
Effective Developer Experience
One of the crucial point within the development cycle is making the changes; in case of the web developments you can roll out changes by refreshing your browser and get almost an immediate feedback. But with mobile development, you require a full build and deploy the code-cycle each time to implement the changes.
With React Native it is not necessary to re-compile the entire rebuilt application every time you make a change, simply choose Cmd+R and refresh, like refreshing the browser to reflect the changes saving a lot of re-compilation time.
Server-side Rendering
Building over React Native, you don’t have to use a different library for object creation. You employ the same file on the client as well as the server side. This is important for performance improvement. Actually, you can first render the static version of the pages using the server-side, which is faster and SEO friendly too, and then enable the UI updates by using React Native on the client-side.
Code Reusability
Whenever you need to build an application using React Native Framework, you need to build a UI that looks and feels native. Hence, some of the UI code should be written according to the platform’s best practices and standards. However, there will always be some basic UI code that can be shared together with all the logic. Having the capacity to share the code is in good interest for many reasons like better usage of human resources, less code to maintain, less possibility of bugs and many more.
Declarative API
When you build applications using React Native, your UI is more predictable and easier to understand since it has a declarative API instead of a basic one. The difference between these methodologies is that when you have an application that has diverse states, you usually need to monitor every change in the UI and modify them. This can become a complicated and very tedious task. If you use React Native, you simply need to consider only the current UI state without keeping track of the older ones.
Easy Reloading
The developers conduct testing every time when some change is made in the code written. To visualize these changes, the app requires compilation and installation in either a simulator or a real device. But not with React Native; it removes the need for recompilation of the application each time a change has been made. All that is required to see changes implemented in the code, is to refresh the app in the simulator, emulator, or device.
Debugging tools
React Native lets you take advantage of intelligent debugging tools. You can utilize whatever text editor you prefer for JavaScript editing. React Native does not drive you to work in Xcode to develop for iOS or Android Studio for Android development.
ES6
With React Native you are not composing code that targets the browser; you are composing code for a single JavaScript runtime. Additionally, the React Native packager transpires your JavaScript and JSX for you, which implies that this code will run the same on both Android and iOS.
Virtual DOM
The virtual DOM is a tree based on JavaScript objects created with React that resembles a DOM tree. Each time you need to change something in the DOM, React employs a different algorithm that exclusively re-renders the DOM nodes that have changed. This algorithm is utilized for productive re-rendering because DOM operations are simpler as compared to executing JavaScript statements. In this way, React can be quick, which is particularly important considering that the system of mobile devices is far less equipped than desktop devices.
With these benefits, React Native is a great expansion to the constantly growing list of JavaScript frameworks. It is a well-written framework, providing a novel ‘functional’ approach to develop the UI. With React Native it is up to the developer to structure code such that business logic is pushed down into a shared set of modules. For each situation, you need to write a thin UI layer that is platform specific. With React Native you will get to discover your own patterns! React native gives the developer the ease of development, better execution and extraordinary user experience in the end. Overall, React Native App development looks extremely encouraging, taking the app development to another level.
