These days the mobile industry is growing very rapidly and every day new tech stacks enter the market as a framework option to choose for your next project. So it becomes difficult to choose the right framework for your native mobile app development project. Nativescript and react native both are popular javascript frameworks. Though both of these frameworks offer native app development possibilities, they vary mostly in performance, codebase, functionality and so on. Then which one will you choose to build complex apps? Or applications that an extend enterprise level or niche-scale? To help you in the decision making, here we’ll compare Nativescript vs react native on the basis of various parameters. But before digging to the comparison let’s see overview of each one in detail.
It is an open-source framework used to build cross-platform apps for android and ios using Javascript. It transpiles one programming language to another while building native apps using Vuejs, Angular and TypeScript. Nativescript has a rendering engine which provides native performance and user experience. You can develop simple gaming apps, real time apps, geolocation apps, music or video streaming apps with Nativescript.
React native is a popular open-source framework that runs on Javascript. Mainly it focussed on native rendering of apps that is highly compatible with ios and android. React Native is written with the combination of XML- Esque markup and Javascript which is also known as JSX. It is supported by facebook community.
With react native you can build simple cross-platform apps, quick prototype apps, apps with simplified UI, apps with reusable components and so on.
Know the reasons to build app app with React native at- Why you should build your app with react native?
NativeScript –
It follows the MVVM or MVC architectural pattern. Whereas, this framework widely functions on Modules, CLI and Plugins. It’s structure composed of multiple modules and each of them enables a set of specific features. Page module and root module are the two important modules that make up the architecture. Togetherly, they form an app module including CSS style, business logic and XML-based UI codes. Nativescript has an ability to efficiently manage module dialogs because of its MVC friendliness.
React Native-
React native possesses a bridge between Native thread and Javascript thread. According to this functionality, Javascript code interfaces with the platform and the Native API. In case of iOS, React native makes use of Javascript separately to run all codes, whereas it bundles the JavascriptCore within the android app. While this may increase the native functionality, it also increases the application size, resulting in performance issues or device lag.
Nativescript-
You can build enterprise level business apps with nativescript and it is one of the best benefit of choosing this framework. Also, you could customize the free, professional-grade UI elements that Nativescript offers. It’s all features are supported by native functionality and native controls so it gives you performance that improves user experience. Nativescript tests its libraries, templates and UI elements before implementation to achieve the desired user-interface. With the use of getFrameByld, classes such as Frame and properties like navigationContext you can improve user experience to the next level.
Style Design in iOS and Android’s Material design are transforming by the day and it becomes challenging for React native to keep up with the constant change in the requirements of native platforms. Also, ready-made React Native UI kits like React Virgin, Shoutem and And Design makes it challenging to create consistent designs across platforms. Some important components like ScrollView fixed header, Activity indicators, Modal components, Snap carousals and pagination components help to improve UX across multi-platform.
NativeScript-
Simple Native app built with NativeScript can be more than 12MB. But it is still small-sized considering the package of native elements and features. Self-containing multiple APKs within one package with single codebase targets various device configurations and reduces size of app. ABI mechanism of Nativescript with android allows device to automatically extract machine code and scan for shared library during development. It saves app size because device identifies the 32 bit and 64 bit compatibility.
The size of hello world app built with react native is 7MB and when native dependencies were added, the size increases up to 13.4 MB. React native can iterate apps faster and at minimal size better than NativeScript. Also, allowing Proguard and using enableSeperateBuildPerCPUArchitecture element will reduce the sie by auto-generating split builds for native and external libraries.
With nativescript, it needs less effort to analyse where the problem lie. As the code is shared between multiple platforms, it takes fixing of a single codebase to correct multiple issues across devices. Also, the behavior of the HTML code-shared as modules differentiate between various platforms by using http.get commands and abstractions. Nativescript has high reusability of components for building different features for different devices. It helps developers to access more solutions and opportunities to sustain the existing codes.
In react native, upgrading and debugging of code is challenging. Code interfaces with the framework’s logic to suit your app so it slows down the development process. Also, most of the native components might have third-party library dependency. Generally these libraries are outdated and cannot be maintained properly because of the issues that come with it by default.
By default it includes a tech stack, plugins and features. With the help of module design pattern, it provides support to Typescript and javascript packages. So developers with diversified knowledge effortlessly use modules of nativescript to build simple and advanced native apps. Also, overall modularity of nativescript brings different developers together to achieve successful results and quality.
It may offer less modularity support. iOS, Android and Reactjs developers might find it hard to correlate with each other and teams may have issues with code fragmentation in React Native. But react native offers the possibility to combine simple native elements of different OS platforms for developers to work together.
Nativescript follows its own QA workflow that improves app’s default testing capabilities. Also it integrates unit testing directly into the default CLI to support testing tools like Mocha, Jasmine and QUnit. Also, you can use external providers like Appium for functional testing. Nativescript uses Karma to run unit tests.
React native doesn’t have official support for UI level testing and integration testing. Means developers need to rely on third-party tools such as Detox and Appium. Also, there are just a few unit level testing frameworks available to test RN apps. Framework doesn’t offer any automation to deploy the iOS apps to app store. Rather, react native suggests to define the manual process of deploying app through Xcode.
As developers can switch between Typescript, Javascript or Angular according to need, feasibility and comfortability, it offers great learning curve. Declarative coding style allows skilled developers to get hands on Nativescript rapidly. One can get complete understanding of native performance comes with development experience in Core Modules and design patterns.
React native is simple for those already built an app with Javascript. But web development and mobile app development are different from one another so app developers may find it difficult to learn and implement the framework. React native has released lots of libraries, documents and tutorials that helps developers to learn it more easily.
You can choose NativeScript when you want to-
You can choose React Native when you want to-