What you need to know before learning React Native

If you want to take your career to the next level as a developer, you need to have React and React Native in your tool belt. Creating mobile applications using cross-platform frameworks has become a development trend these days. Cross-platform application frameworks like React Native can help you develop native mobile apps that work on both Android and iOS devices.

In this article, we're going to list the technologies and skills you should have before getting started with React Native.

Today, in this article, we are going to describe the skills that you must have before starting with React Native, but before that, I suggest that if you do not have any information about React, it is better to visit the Instagram rtl theme first with the tutorials in This article stated, raise your knowledge and then start learning React Native.

What is React Native?

React Native is a JavaScript framework used to build natively-rendering cross-platform applications based on the React library (by Facebook).

Like React, React Native is used to build UI components, with an added advantage: React Native can render UI on multiple platforms, not just in the browser. In addition to web-based apps, React Native can be used to build apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows.

React Native provides a standard set of APIs for building UI components, thereby enabling developers to write code only once and run it on multiple platforms. React Native is very easy to learn for people who come from a web development background.

A developer who knows React can create apps for any platform supported by React Native. HTML, CSS and JavaScript are the main web technologies that are required to learn React. React is written purely in JavaScript with some HTML-like commands called JSX to create UI components. Using CSS, you can give different styles to the user interface components.

Now, let's take a closer look at these technologies individually.

HTML and CSS

HTML and CSS are the main technologies in web development. HTML is a skeleton that creates elements and layouts for a web page, and CSS gives a style to these elements and layouts. Mastering HTML and CSS is a critical step.

Resources for learning HTML and CSS

https://www.w3schools.com/html/

https://www.w3schools.com/css/

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS

JavaScript

Once you are comfortable with HTML and CSS, you can start learning JavaScript. JavaScript is a programming language that allows you to add interactions and logic to your web pages. Using JavaScript, you can listen to events such as button clicks or input focus and add interactivity to your programs.

Similarly, in React Native, you can listen to various events, access native APIs, and core business logic (business logic is the part of an application that encodes the real-world business rules that determine how data is stored. , creates and changes) using JavaScript. Therefore, it is very important that you are comfortable with JavaScript before learning React Native.

Basics of JavaScript

The first thing you need to cover in JavaScript is the basics of the language. This means getting familiar with syntax and basic operation, understanding how to declare variables and objects, and define and call functions. You should also learn how to work with objects, arrays, strings and dates using JavaScript methods.

DOM (manipulation)

When writing JavaScript, one of the most common things you'll do is manipulate the DOM.

The Document Object Model (DOM) is a tree structure that represents the current web page. Browser DOM API enables developers to programmatically access HTML elements to add required business logic.

For example, you can change the color of a text when the mouse pointer is over it

React

React is a JavaScript library that enables developers to create user interface components. Common web pages use HTML and CSS to build the UI, but with React, the user interface is built solely using JavaScript. React is also known for having a virtual DOM under the hood, which is used instead of manipulating the DOM directly.

Mastering React before learning React Native will make your job much easier. Although React and React Native are used to develop applications for different platforms, they are very similar in terms of syntax.

Virtual DOM

React creates a virtual DOM (VDOM), which is a representation of the DOM structure to be rendered on a web page. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of how React works internally, you should learn about the VDOM. Virtual DOM is a framework agnostic concept, so it is also used in other frameworks such as Vue.

Principles of Coroutines | Read Coroutines for Beginners now

JSX

Using React, you can create reusable UI components and pass data between them. Components are written using a special JavaScript syntax extension called JSX (JavaScript XML).

JSX is similar to HTML syntax and is very powerful because it can handle JavaScript expressions. In JSX, instead of HTML attributes, props are used to transfer data from parent components to child components.

Data handling

Components can also manage their data internally using state. props and state are two very important concepts in React. It's important to have a clear understanding of how data is processed in React, since this is what you'll be doing most of the time.

React components

There are two types of components in React – class component and function component.

Class components have different lifecycle methods that are called during the render process. Function components can use hooks to manage different states. Both types of components have their advantages and disadvantages and you should know which one is suitable for your use.

Learn more

Once the basics of React are covered, you can move on to more advanced topics such as context, component pattern, portals, and component testing. In addition, you can try different third party libraries such as Redux, Material UI or Axios.

Familiarize yourself with npm or yarn package installers because you often deal with packages.

The best place to learn React is from the official documentation. If reading isn't your thing, you can find plenty of resources on YouTube and Udemy.

Topics such as JSX, components, lifecycle methods, hooks and state management are the main elements of application development with React Native. As a React Native developer, you will be working on the topics listed daily, so you should be comfortable with them before learning React Native.

Conclusion

By now, I hope you have a clear idea of the topics and technologies you need to learn before jumping into React Native. In this article, we explained how to learn web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React, which can help you learn React Native. I strongly recommend that you get comfortable with JavaScript as it is the programming language used in React Native. Having a solid foundation will help you start learning more easily and will also help you troubleshoot problems faster.

To prepare for learning React Native, you can also learn a little about Java and Swift or Objective-C, as these are the main programming languages for Android and iOS development.

Just doing theory is not enough. Once you are familiar with the syntax, start by creating small projects like a calculator. As you practice, you will understand more and face challenges. The more you solve the problem, the better. If you get stuck, you can search the web, as most solutions are already available.

Conclusion

We hope you got good ideas about React and React Native in this article

In this article, we tried to fully learn how to learn web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and React, which can be very useful for you if you intend to learn React Native.

Thank you for being with us so far in this article; Good luck