Businesses that are looking to make a presence on mobile have to compromise if they plan to go with a fast time to market at low cost development. If they concentrate with app quality, they might compromise on time to market, and if they focus on time to market, they might need to compromise on quality and indirectly increases the cost. To achieve all three, they get restricted to one platform- Android/iOS.
React native has established itself as a framework to deliver the ideal trio offering to a business, that in many ways have brought it ranks ahead of the quality but time taking native app development process. There are lots of points that bring react native ahead in discussion between React native vs native app development. Here we’ll discuss reasons to use react native for mobile app development. But before digging to it, let us see the overview of React native.
React native is an open-source framework developed by Facebook to build native mobile apps using Javascript. It includes the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class Javascript library to build user interfaces. These days many companies prefer t build their apps using React Native as a solution because one can write pretty much all of the code in Javascript and share it across iOS and Android and doesn’t need to pay for two separate development teams and maintain two different code bases.
Know the best local databases for react native app development at- Selecting Local Databases for React Native App Development
Generally in a typical mobile app development, different codebases are used separately for Android and iOS. But in case of React native, library helps in app development that runs on both Android and iOS with the same codebase. As react native is single codebase, this makes it possible for React Native app developers to write code once and run it on multiple platforms, that eliminates the need to write code twice. So reduces the development speed and efforts.
Those time were gone when the WebView components were used in hybrid mobile apps development. And this made possible because of the fact that React Native app developers uses reusable “native components”. These components tend to compile straight to native apps. Also, the components that are used for development of android and ios apps makes it possible for developers to attain platform wise look and feel. When you build React Native apps, component specific structure allows you to develop apps with agile, web-based approach- development that of typical hybrid apps. The developed app has the look and feel, speed and all required functionalities of native mobile app.
React native app development has great functions like hot and live reloading at its core. So developers can change code in real-time and make fixes while the app is loading: the live feature automatically reloads the whole app after doing changes, while hot reloading only reloads a particular area of change, so eases the app development and testing process. It makes the app development process faster, more efficient and more intuitive.
Main disadvantage of cross platform app development is that when you are not developing a mobile app for any particular operating system, it becomes difficult to incorporate the device’s hardware capabilities in mobile app. But this is not an issue with react native apps. The library uses lots of third-party plugins that makes it possible for developers to add device’s in-built elements such as GPS, Bluetooth in the mobile app. Also, as the react native application developers make use of third party plugins, the high memory use and load speed issues are never faced by them.
React native components map 1:1 with native development. And so it allows developers to draw interfaces faster, increases the app’s agility and creates an authentic, native feel that is impalpable from native apps. Also RN is compliant with native software and can seamlessly integrate with existing code, that makes it ideal for adding quick extensions to existing native apps.
When you invest in react native for app development, you invest in low coding efforts. As the app development company has single codebase for both platforms, their number of code lines decreases. Also, because of the decreased code lines, testing efforts also get reduced and this makes the complete mobile app development process a lot faster to a great extent.
The above mentioned reason when added with ease of development and added advantage of getting access to a greater market size, that is generally restricted in case of native app development has tempted various established brands to move their mobile business process to React Native for App Development.
React native has one of the biggest community among all cross-platforms and so it helps developers. One can get help from community experts or find libraries of relevant information that you can use to develop react native based apps.
Know the most common mistakes to avoid in react native app development at- Most Common Mistakes To Avoid When Creating A React Native App
React native will be the best choice for app development, if you are looking for time and cost effective mobile app development. It works on single codebase, so reduce development efforts, time and cost by a great extent.
When you invest in developing a cross platform app from scratch, it would be good to use React Native. But if you already have an app and are looking to add in React Native codes, it will be better to not go with it.
React Native application development is known to come most helpful when your application has a low to medium complexity level. Also, when the application would use various reusable components rather than developing from the scratch.