Learning React Native

Preface

This book is an introduction to React Native, Facebook’s JavaScript framework for building mobile applications. Using your existing knowledge of JavaScript and React, you’ll be able to build and deploy fully featured mobile applications for both iOS and Android that truly render natively. Just because it’s JavaScript doesn’t mean we should settle for less. There are plenty of advantages to working with React Native over traditional means of mobile development, and we don’t need to sacrifice the native look and feel.

We’ll start with the basics, and work our way up to deploying a full-fledged application to both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store, with 100% code reuse between the two platforms. In addition to the essentials of the framework, we’ll discuss how to work beyond it, including how to make use of third-party libraries and even how to write your own Java or Objective-C libraries to extend React Native.

If you’re coming to mobile development from the perspective of a frontend software engineer or web developer, this is the book for you. React Native is a pretty amazing thing, and I hope you’re as excited to explore it as I am!

Prerequisites

This book is not an introduction to React, in general. We’ll assume that you have some working knowledge of React. If you’re brand new to React, I suggest reading through a tutorial or two before coming back to take the plunge into mobile development. Specifically, you should be familiar with the role of props and state, the component lifecycle, and how to create React components.

We’ll also be using some ES6 syntax, as well as JSX. If you aren’t familiar with these, don’t worry; we’ll cover JSX in Chapter 2, and ES6 syntax in Appendix A. These features are essentially 1:1 translations of the JavaScript code you’re already accustomed to writing.

This book assumes you are developing on OS X. Developing on OS X is a requirement for writing iOS apps. Linux and Windows support for writing Android applications is a work-in-progress. You can read more about Linux and Android support here.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Tip

This element signifies a tip or suggestion.

Note

This element signifies a general note.

Warning

This element indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is available for download at: https://github.com/bonniee/learning-react-native.

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Learning React Native by Bonnie Eisenman (O’Reilly). Copyright 2016 Bonnie Eisenman, 978-1-491-92900-1.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [e-mail].

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We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. You can access this page at http://bit.ly/learning-react-native.

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Resources

It’s dangerous to go alone! Well, not really, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Here are some resources you may find useful as you work through the book:

• The GitHub repository for this book contains all of the code samples we’ll be discussing. If you get stumped, or want more context, try looking here first.

• Join the mailing list at LearningReactNative.com for follow-up articles, suggestions, and helpful resources.

• The official documentation has a lot of good reference material.

Additionally, the React Native community is a useful resource:

• Brent Vatne’s React Native newsletter

• The react-native tag on Stack Overflow

• #reactnative (irc://chat.freenode.net/reactnative) on Freenode

Acknowledgments

As is traditional: this book would not have been possible without the help and support of many others. Thank you to my editor, Meg Foley, and the rest of the O’Reilly team, for bringing this project into the world. Thank you also to my technical reviewers, for your time and insightful feedback: David Bieber, Jason Brown, Erica Portnoy, and Jonathan Stark. I would also like to thank the React Native team, without whose stellar work this book would naturally be impossible. Thanks also to Zachary Elliot for his help with the Zebreto application and Android in general.

And many thanks are owed to my dear friends, who put up with me throughout this process and provided moral support, guidance, and distraction, as the situation required. Thank you.