When to Choose React Native for Building a Mobile App and When to Avoid It

React native is a promising cross-platform app development solution with a growing scope. By its versatility, this open-source application framework developed by Facebook enables to cut expense and time equally. It has greater capacities and qualities than the native platform for the hybrid app development process. However, though it has a wider scope in the mobile app development industry, it has certain disadvantages at certain points.

Let’s check when to choose to react native for building a mobile app and when to avoid it. 

React Native and When is it good?

React Native is open for anyone who can make use of it. It uses the high-level programming language JavaScript and native UI elements to give the apps a native appearance. Taking the count of the apps that integrate React Native framework, the top ten includes the world’s best mobile apps. Airbnb, Bloomberg, UberEats, Facebook manager, Instagram, Myntra and a lot more have React Native as its core component. 

It is a really good choice for all scales of mobile application, but a bit more fitting with the apps that has a more sophisticated server to carry out the computation process. This would be the very reason Airbnb shared their inconvenience on the functionality of the framework with their application. 

 React Native app development further comprises of a lot of benefits and surprises to the developers. As an open-source platform, plenty of documentation is available for free to anyone in the community and each experience could be shared with anyone in the community. 

Benefits of React Native Framework

The most gleaming advantage of the React Native framework is -reusable codes. This feature eases out the app development process by far. This versatility enables them to use the same codes recurrently for iOS and Android simultaneously. Plus, with its native and Javascript modules React Native allows the users to add the third-party plug-in to integrate additional features t the basic functionality. 

Besides, the abundant presets and libraries enable the coders to scribe error-free codes quicker. And its declarative coding style makes coding more flexible and simplifies the process.  Besides, the Hot-reloading feature makes way to change the source code and cut off unnecessary app recompilations. Its provision that bridges JavaScripts with native elements to interact and produce a native experience is also exceptional.  

React native has a modular architecture which is essentially a software design technique that breaks down the functionality of a program into modules that are independent and interchangeable. This feature allows developers to interfere with each other’s projects and make generic updated if required. It enables developers to upgrade and update applications fasters and makes React Native is highly intuitive. Software testers working with React native can easily generate testing scenarios as they do not need to spend a lot of time understanding the programming logic. 

The react native coding style is declarative as it focuses on what the program should do and not on how to do it. This declarative coding style makes react-native flexible and profitable for developers, especially in scenarios where the developer needs to work on a new project quickly. The declarative style makes code easier to read for both developers and the system as it simplifies coding paradigms and the coding process.

Another benefit of using React Native for app development is that it helps developers’ produce stable applications by simplifying the beta binding process. This framework secures the parent data by not letting the child components affect it, thereby making the applications reliable. 

You can use this framework to modify and update existing applications in a cost-effective way inserting its UI components into the applications without having to rewrite them completely.

Where React Native is not a good fit?

Apps developed with the React Native framework need additional security layers as it is a JavaScript-based library and Javascript is known for its fragility. Developers need to closely monitor the program for malicious code snippets that could disrupt the application’s functionality easily, especially while using third-party add-ons. Due to its lack of security, React Native is not ideal for developing banking or finance applications.

Despite the tremendous breakthroughs that React Native brought to simplify app development, it has a lot of crits as well. Though it is a good option for hybrid app development practices, it has numerous limitations in the app development journey.  A report from Airbnb says that it is not an all-in-one solution for app development, though it holds a multitude of features to speed up the app development process. 

As it is a newborn, its growth is comparatively rapid as a result the users have to find unexpected changes in their development and post-development cycle. It seems a bit immature than the native alternatives and demands repeated updates to the application. These regular changes in codes and functionality features turn into a headache for the developers. 

Also, React native is not grown up to a level that provides all kinds of coding requirements. Hence, developers need to incorporate native codes to shape the application to the expectations. But, more of the times, React Native appears to be not compatible with other codes. 

Further, applications with complex and extended user interface found it difficult to work with its flat list library. Applications with complex UI prefer to stick with native coding solution that offers better flexibility and resources. Plus, apps that are meant for a single operating system are not a friend of React Native. To maintain flexibility and OS-specific features, native codes are more suitable for such kind of applications.  

Conclusion:

React Native is a go-to framework with amazing coding features for mobile app developers. Especially, for hybrid app development and cross-platform app development, this is a sought after solution. It not only simplifies the app development process but saves a lot of time. However, the potential os the React Native framework is still growing. However, it has an extensive expert community to mitigate all its bugs and errors and have a good root to mitigate the growing troubles as well. Hopefully, shortly, we can see its promising capacities to solve the app development process in more sophisticated ways.