React Native is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software framework In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing generic functionality, can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. It provides a standard ...

created by Meta Platforms, Inc. It is used to develop applications for

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

Android TV Android TV is a smart TV operating system based on Android and developed by Google for television sets, digital media players, set-top boxes, and soundbars. A successor to Google TV, it features a user interface designed around content discover ...

, iOS,

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

tvOS tvOS (formerly known as Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. Starting with the second-generatio ...

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created b ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

and UWP by enabling developers to use the React framework along with native platform capabilities. It is also being used to develop virtual reality applications at

Oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American s ...

History

In 2012

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...

commented, "The biggest mistake we made as a company was betting too much on

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

as opposed to native". Using HTML5 for Facebook's mobile version resulted in an unstable application that retrieved data slowly. He promised

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

would soon deliver a better mobile experience. Inside Facebook, Jordan Walke found a way to generate UI elements for iOS from a background

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

thread Thread may refer to: Objects * Thread (yarn), a kind of thin yarn used for sewing ** Thread (unit of measurement), a cotton yarn measure * Screw thread, a helical ridge on a cylindrical fastener Arts and entertainment * ''Thread'' (film), 2016 ...

, which became the basis for the React web framework. They decided to organize an internal

Hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

to perfect this prototype in order to be able to build native apps with this technology. In 2015, after months of development, Facebook released the first version for the React JavaScript Configuration. During a technical talk, Christopher Chedeau explained that Facebook was already using React Native in production for their Group App and their Ads Manager App.

Implementation

The working principles of React Native are virtually identical to React except that React Native does not manipulate the DOM via the Virtual DOM. It runs in a background process (which interprets the

written by the developers) directly on the end-device and communicates with the native platform via serialized data over an

asynchronous Asynchrony is the state of not being in synchronization. Asynchrony or asynchronous may refer to: Electronics and computing * Asynchrony (computer programming), the occurrence of events independent of the main program flow, and ways to deal wit ...

and batched bridge. React components wrap existing native code and interact with native APIs via React's declarative UI paradigm and

. While React Native styling has a similar syntax to CSS, it does not use

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone t ...

. Instead, messages from the JavaScript thread are used to manipulate native views. Without React Native, developers have to write native code in the languages of the aimed platform such as

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

or Kotlin for

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its N ...

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT ...

for iOS, and C++/WinRT or C# for

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

. React Native is also available for both

and

, which is currently maintained by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

Hello World example

A Hello, World program in React Native looks like this: import from 'react-native'; import * as React from 'react'; const HelloWorldApp = () => export default HelloWorldApp; AppRegistry.registerComponent('HelloWorld', () => HelloWorldApp);

History

Implementation

Hello World example

See also