However, the way in which you construct your UI is very much the same as it was when developing with Objective-C: it’s still UIKit-based and imperative. Swift has introduced more functional ways to encode algorithms, as well as techniques that encourage transformation and immutability. However, the functional programming aspect should pique your interest! If you have only ever written applications in Swift, you might not be particularly excited about the prospect of using JavaScript. This tutorial only covers iOS, but once you’ve learned the concepts here you could port that knowledge into creating an Android app very quickly.

The goal is to learn-once (the React way) and write-anywhere. It’s goal isn’t to write the code once and run it on any platform.

React Native brings the React paradigm to mobile app development. Your UI is simply a function of the current app state.

Additionally (unlike Titanium), React introduces a novel, radical and highly functional approach to constructing user interfaces.

It doesn’t have the drawbacks typically associated with a hybrid HTML5 app.

(Unlike PhoneGap) with React Native your code may be written in JavaScript but the app’s UI is fully native.

What makes React Native different from other frameworks such as PhoneGap (Apache Cordova) or Appcelerator Titanium, that use JavaScript to create iOS apps? In this React Native tutorial you’ll learn how to build native apps based on the hugely popular React JavaScript library. The previous tutorial was written by iOS Team member Tom Elliot. Update note: This tutorial has been updated to React Native 0.50, Xcode 9, and iOS 11 by Christine Abernathy.

React native tutorials