React Native
Our React Native experts can help build, deploy, and update your mobile applications harnessing the power of React.
Connect with us
Need a free React Native consultation? Bitovi's React Native experts are on standby and ready to help.
Working with Bitovi has been a great experience for us at Rocket Rounding. We had crucial upgrades that needed to be made across our back-end and front-end apps to keep them in Apple and Android app stores and Bitovi handled it seamlessly and under budget. We were able to get our applications back in both stores much sooner than expected. I'm excited to continue working with Bitovi in the near future for additional feature development and would encourage anyone looking for solid developer skills to consider hiring them.
Sean Podvent
Managing Director, Rocket Rounding
Why React Native?
React Native is a mobile framework meant to build mobile applications natively for iOS and Android leveraging the React library. It was introduced in 2015, and since then React Native has become the most popular choice for native development. It follows ReactJS conventions and uses JavaScript and JSX for its development language. Consequentially, it reduces developer overhead in those businesses that already support a web application, since devs will not need to learn Swift or Kotlin to develop for these mobile platforms. Furthermore, by leveraging Javascript, companies can further reduce overhead by eliminating code repetition between their mobile and web clients. Additionally, by exposing components that compile to the platform’s native UI, React Native is fast and provides a smooth user experience and deep integration. React Native supports the ethos of “build once, deploy everywhere”, as a single codebase can support builds to iOS and Android, which makes it easy to manage and highly scalable. Furthermore, React Native has a large and active contributor community that ensures it remains up-to-date. Some of the world’s biggest companies use React Native for their major projects.
React Native vs. Other Frameworks
Capacitor is a native runtime platform that compiles your web applications into native applications and exposes an API for interacting with the native platform in JavaScript. It renders content into a WebView, so basically you can pop a normal web application into Capacitor, output a native application, and even extend that application with native functionality. Ionic, the company that makes Capacitor, also develops an Ionic Framework, a UI toolkit you can leverage in your application to build a web-first app that looks and feels native on mobile.
Ionic Framework is a popular framework for mobile app development. It uses web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It is web-first, which means the development is primarily done for web applications and the code is then deployed for all other devices. It uses WebView to display web pages on mobile devices. This means that adding native functionality like accessing the camera would require an extra step. Also, making the app look different on different devices would need additional work. This leads to a lower performance when compared to React Native which communicates directly with the native code. Bitovi React Native developers can help you determine which solution would be the right fit for your enterprise goals.
Flutter is another open-source framework created by Google that allows building multi-platform applications from a single codebase. Due to its compiler known as “Ahead of Time” (AoT), Flutter provides slightly better performance than React Native. However, it uses Dart which is a programming language created by Google. So, there is a learning curve involved when working with Flutter. On the other hand, due to React’s popularity, working with React Native involves little to no learning time.
Apache Cordova is another popular framework that allows similar native development using web technology. Like Capacitor, Cordova is also web-first, which makes the development process easy and it uses WebViews to display the web page across different applications. It provides JavaScript interfaces to access platform-specific features. Since Cordova applications are usually web application, it does not deliver the same look and feel as other frameworks that use native code. Additionally, since it uses WebViews, it lacks in performance when compared to React Native.
Xamarin is an open-source platform for building mobile apps created by Microsoft. Like other frameworks, it provides the ability to build applications for multiple platforms using a single codebase. It provides UI components for using platform-specific native tools. It allows up to 90% of the code to be shared across different systems. However, since it uses C#, using Xamarin may involve substantial learning time. In addition to not being free for larger companies, Xamarin does not have as large a community as React Native.
How Does React Native Work?
React Native can communicate with the JavaScript thread as well as the Native thread and it aims to make them work together. Native code is executed directly on the platform or device, whereas JavaScript needs a virtual machine to run. iOS devices use JavaScriptCore, which is a JavaScript engine to run the JavaScript thread. On the other hand, Android devices don’t have such an engine. So, JavaScriptCore is bundled along with the React Native framework. Since the two threads use different programming languages (Java/Objective-C vs. JavaScript), a direct line of communication between them is not possible. This is where React Native steps in and acts as a mediator between the two. This bidirectional communication is made possible by a set of programs called bridges. This bridge uses JSON objects to relay information between the two threads. Native code is compiled into Java/C++ binary files, while JavaScript is compiled into JS bundles. Both of these compiled code is then converted to .apk or .ipa executable files to be used by Android and iOS platforms respectively. During runtime, JavaScript code runs on a JS virtual machine, while the native code runs directly on the platform, and the bridge relays messages between these two. At Bitovi, our React Native consultants have a keen grasp of this bridge relay and can help you swiftly integrate React Native into your existing project.
We have the experience
Whether you are thinking of adding React Native to your existing projects or starting a project from scratch, our team has the experience to help you. They have expertise in various libraries and tools like:
-
React Native
-
React
-
JSX
-
Xcode
-
Android Studio
-
Firebase
-
... and many more
React Native Insights
How Bitovi can build your React Native applications
Help your team determine the requirements and infrastructure required for a new React Native application.
Work with your team to analyze your current native application and determine the best way to add React Native.
Help your team set up the network infrastructure so that mobile apps across platforms work seamlessly.
Help your team identify the best tools to add React Native functionality.
Set up tests to ensure your app’s performance and stability.
Help your team stay up-to-date and secure with best practices for mobile development.
How Bitovi can improve your React Native applications
Optimize your platforms with React Native
Often an enterprise will have applications across web and mobile platforms. Depending upon the needs of your enterprise and the goals of your application, your company may choose to run a web-first solution with Capacitor, or they may choose to split the solution into separate, platform-specific applications. Bitovi has an extensive history of guiding companies through these decisions, and we can help your company find the right solution that exists at the intersection of cost, maintainability, and performance.
For example, does your company prioritize a smaller technical overhead? We might recommend starting your application journey with Capacitor and Ionic Framework, so a team of fewer developers can write once and build everywhere. Alternatively, does your company prioritize optimal UX and deep integration with native features? If so, we may recommend splitting the work into web and mobile-specific applications, likely leveraging React Native. Even so, however, we have tried and true approaches for minimizing the technical overhead in the resultant split by way of effective code sharing. Speak with a Bitovi representative today to learn more about how our React Native developers can maximize your platform performance with a minimal footprint.
Deploy your React Native applications with confidence
Our React Native developers can build or improve your applications' deployment pipelines, leveraging popular tools and services like Fastlane and App Center. Don’t risk bottlenecking your release schedule on the expertise of a single developer. Instead, implement powerful and sophisticated workflows to build, bundle, version, test, and deploy your application with the click of a single button. Furthermore, allow our experienced DevOps engineers to integrate reporting into that pipeline so that you and your teams can rest easy having all the data at your fingertips.
Unlike immediate releases to the web, releases to mobile platforms must go through the oftentimes tedious and slow App Store or Google Play store review process. So, what if a mission-critical bug surfaces after your most recent release? Bitovi React Native developers are adept at implementing modern tooling like CodePush to circumvent these delays and push hotfixes to your deployment ASAP, ensuring a continuous quality UX.
Streamline Quality Assurance with powerful tooling
Whereas applications that exist solely on the web appear in a comparatively limited number of browsers (Chrome, Safari, Explorer, Firefox, etc.), mobile applications have the unfortunate burden of appearing across a vast number of viewports and devices making it all the easier to introduce visual bugs/regressions as new features come online.
BrowserStack provides a strong solution for visual regression testing, as you can set up device profiles for any number and range of devices and more rapidly assert against them for visual bugs/regressions. Furthermore, our Bitovi DevOps engineers can provide robust automation, so that any changes to your main branches automatically launch a BrowserStack build, expediting and assuring quality in your pipelines.
While virtualized device testing provides robust support and does catch many bugs, to ensure exceptional UX and native integrations on mobile applications, we also must run tests on physical devices. To that end, Bitovi can help your developer and QA teams set up and leverage TestFlight and Android Studio for manual tests on iOS and Android devices, respectively.
Modernize your React Native applications
To stay up-to-date with App and Google Play Store requirements and avoid deployment blockers, it is paramount that companies keep their React Native package dependency updated as well as their iOS and Android configurations. Haven’t touched your dependency in a while and are nervous about the cascading consequences of updating such an impactful package? Bitovi has got you covered. Our React Native developers have seen their fair share of React Native upgrades and will swiftly upgrade yours.
If your company is new to mobile applications or hasn’t refreshed its mobile application features in some time, then you should be sure to leverage powerful features like deep linking, push notifications, and analytics. These features can be the difference-maker that brings your application to the forefront of users' minds. Allow our React Native developers to assist your team in the implementation and testing of these features to seriously upgrade your application’s performance.
Two common pain points when onboarding any web developer to React Native are the differences in navigation and animation. React Native Navigation and Reanimated are some of the most popular native navigation and styling libraries, respectively, that allow your application to integrate seamlessly with native code. How they leverage navigation and styling, however, differs in some key ways from browser behavior. Our React Native developers can train your team on these libraries and more!
Schedule a free consultation!
Bitovi's React Native experts are on standby and ready to help you foster success in your engineering organization.