Top 5 Reasons to Choose React Native for Mobile App Development

In today’s digitally inclined market, a mobile app is a strategically sound move made by many businesses. Mobile app development is a complex process, and requires time and effort. However, the process has been made simpler with the help of technological advancements in app development frameworks.

React Native is one such framework that has made developers’ work significantly easier. It is an open-source framework that was created by Facebook, originally for the Facebook mobile app. It is a cross-platform development framework that is aimed at reduced development time and improved performance. It is very popular, and is widely being adopted by more and more mobile app development services everyday.

Why Use React Native

Here are a few reasons why you should consider using React Native for your mobile app development process.

1. Fast Development Across Platforms

A significant advantage of the React Native framework is the use of a single codebase. A single platform for app development means you can achieve consistent user experience across platforms, be it iOS or Android. React Native achieves this by using ReactJS with a native UI library and APIs. Once the app has been developed for a single platform (say, Android), the same codebase can easily be reused to create the same app for iOS, with just some minor tweaking. This keeps the process of building hybrid apps significantly fast.

If you have a web application made with ReactJS, you can reuse the component logic, state management, and React hooks and create a great mobile application that will have all the native functionalities. Not only does this significantly reduce time of development, it also keeps development costs low. A fast development window means you can launch an app and join in the competition as quickly as you’d like. And since it uses a single codebase, you will not have to hire separate developers to create iOS and Android apps.

A portion of your code will be written the usual CSS and JavaScript, which will then be taken by React Native and run using the JavaScript engine of the host platform. This allows you to receive the benefits of native behavior, animations, and performance, without actually having to write code in Objective C or Java.

2. Simple Development & Easy Debugging

The UI library provided by Facebook is used by React Native to easily create app UI that is robust and interactive. A very important feature supporting this is the hot and live reloading function that React Native has at its core. Using this feature, developers can get a live preview of the code and its impact in real time, and make necessary fixes as the application is loading. The “hot reload” function means you will no longer have to wait to run your app over and over in order to see if your code changes are working.

Hot reloading only reloads a specific area of the change. However, the live reloading feature automatically reloads the entire app after implementing the changes. This makes the development and testing process significantly easier, and ensures that the code is bug-free.

3. Looks Native

Apps that have been built with Phonegap or Ionic tend to gear towards a web-based user experience, which often subpar when compared to a native app experience. This is an area in which React Native particularly excels with its native UI components. You are allowed to make use of elements native to the mobile design since React native components can access the other natie components. It makes use of native user interface building blocks and combines them with its own JavaScript code.

This ensures that the apps you build not just work and look like native apps, but are also greatly enhanced in terms of user experience. Since React Native makes use of the same UI building blocks for both Android as well as iOS, users can experience the same look and feel on the app across both platforms. Additionally, developers also have the option to write a mixture of React code and native code in order to further enhance the native-like look and functionality of their apps.

4. Libraries, Plugins, & Ready-made Solutions

Building an application from scratch can be a time-consuming and expensive affair. This can be overcome, however, if your app has a pre-made foundation based on which you can start development. This is where third party plugins come in. React Native has 2 kinds of applicable third-party plugins – JavaScript Modules and Native Modules. These plugins remove any requirement of specific Web View functions. The plugins can simply be connected using React Native as the framework.

There are plenty of reusable libraries for React Native that are available online, and their number keeps increasing everyday as more and more companies, such as Wix, have begun to support it. Testing libraries like Chai, Jest, and Mocha help you in writing code that’s bug-free. Expo is an open-source platform that you can use to analyze your development progress and try out new features. Potential errors can also be identified using a process called linting, and a great tool to help in this task for React Native is ESLint. Tools like Flow and PropType can also help in faster type checking. A popular library that helps with state management is Redux.

5. Plenty of Developers & Large Community

A very good reason to choose React Native for your app is the ease with which you can find developers. The React community is large and active, and it is backed by Facebook who does the primary heavy lifting when it comes to development. The constant development and updates to the platform from Facebook engineers helps to keep it relevant.

JavaScript is one of the most well accepted languages for coding, and as such has attracted a large pool of specialists who are proficient with both ReactJS as well as React Native. The credibility and maturity of JavaScript, along with its wide range of applications allows new developers to learn the language easily. Therefore, hiring react native developers should also be a relatively simple and quick process.

Conclusion

React Native offers plenty of unique benefits. It helps you create apps faster, creates better quality products, and gives you an app that looks and feels native. While the choice of technology stack really depends on your own business requirements, React Naive is an overall great choice for mobile app development.