REACT NATIVE: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO MODERN CROSS-PLATFORM MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Published in: Quaestus (Timio̦ara) no. 21; pp. 120 - 136
• Main Authors: Ranisavljević, Tamara, Karabašević, Darjan, Brzaković, Miodrag, Popović, Gabrijela, Stanujkić, Dragiša
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Timisoara Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University, Faculty of Management in Tourism and Commerce Tourism 01.06.2022
• Subjects: JavaScript; Libraries; User interface
• ISSN: 2285-424X; 2343-8134

React Native is a framework for building native iOS and Android applications using JavaScript. The React library is the key feature. React Native has the same design as React, allowing composing a rich mobile user interface from declarative components, but uses native components instead of web components to render a user interface. React Native has a powerful composition model and recommendation is to use composition instead of inheritance to reuse code between components. To build the content of a component, React Native provides props. Components are in a tree-like structure and data flow through components is unidirectional. In addition to props, components can also have an internal state. Each of the prop and state change triggers a complete re-render of the component. Two main Hooks enable managing a component internal state and component lifecycle. Global state management is provided by Redux and Context API. Context API is a React built-in functionality to share data across the application without having to pass through props. It is like a global value which can be accessed anywhere through the application component tree. Redux is a state management container used for handling all the application related data. All changes to the data happen through reducers and all data is maintained in a global store.