React Native for Web — A Beginner’s Guide

Introduction

One of the most significant decisions to make when starting a new project is choosing your development stack. You need to pick a platform on which most of your users are active, but at the same time, the platform shouldn’t be too restrictive.

The prospective growth of your application might require you to reach users on an entirely different platform. Your initial stack should be adaptable enough to accommodate such growth requirements.

Speaking of adaptable technologies, React Native for Web enables developers to use React Native Components and APIs on the web. This is a game-changer in the battle between mobile-first frameworks, as React Native development services are among the most popular choices to build cross-platform mobile applications.

This article will discuss the buzz surrounding React Native development for Web!

Can we use React Native for web and mobile?

Yes! A react native development company can easily write a single React Native application that can run natively on Android and iOS, as well as on a web browser using standard web technologies, using react native for the web.

But assuming that React, the conceptual parent of React Native, is built specifically for the web, it’s worth questioning why such technology is necessary in the first place.

The reality is that the foundation of a mobile app is entirely distinct from the foundation of a web app. For example, React uses essential HTML5 elements like div and span to construct its layout, while React Native development firm uses custom UI APIs like View and Text. Due to this dissimilarity, very few technologies support building apps for both web and mobile.

React Native for Web is a shot to bridge this gap. It is built to help create cross-platform applications using a single React Native codebase. But how does it do so? Let’s find out.

Using React Native on the browser: How does React Native for Web work?

As mentioned earlier, web apps and mobile apps have very different foundations. There are different APIs in both platforms to do the same job, like rendering the UI.

The idea behind any framework that aims to bridge this gap is easy: use one platform’s APIs to build the equivalent of the other platform’s APIs. React Native for Web does simply that.

React Native for Web provides browser-compatible matches of React Native components. For instance, if a <View> is used to render views in React Native mobile, a browser-compatible version of this <View> is available in React Native for Web, which has a method for compiling this view down to a web <div>. Hire the best react native mobile app development company in the US for react native development services.

This raises an essential point: not all native components can be made browser-friendly. Some mobile-oriented components use mobile hardware APIs, which are not directly accessible by a web browser.

We can’t use React Native for Web to port an app into its web version completely. But we can still port a significant part of it, and more often than not, that is sufficient.

Styling is another area of dissimilarity between React and React Native. In React, we can use a long list of styling solutions, that includes CSS, Sass, CSS-in-JS, etc. While, in React Native, all styles are written in CSS-in-JS.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, React Native for Web adopts the CSS-in-JS approach of React Native, assuring that the same set of styles works well on both mobile and web.

Integrations

You can see the React Native Directory find React Native packages that provide web support.

The following famous web frameworks provide APIs for integration as well:

• Docz
• Gatsby
• Next.js (and example recipes)
• Razzle
• Styleguidist

Ending Notes

React Native for Web is a compatibility layer between React DOM and React Native. It can be used in new and existing web-only and multi-platform apps.

React Native for Web uses React DOM to exactly render React Native compatible JavaScript code in a web browser. This brings several powerful abstractions to web developers, including simple styles in JavaScript API, built-in layout localization, and a high-level gesture system.

MMCGBL is a high-performance react native development services provider that enables you to provide an outstanding customer experience on every platform and achieve your business goals.