We live in the world of a variety of mobile devices majorly dominated by two platforms, iOS, and Android. It is a two-horse race and I am sure we can all agree on that. Building a mobile application is not an easy task though.

For iOS, you write code using Objective-C or Swift and for Android, you will find yourself using Java. Apart from different programming languages used to create a mobile that can run on each of the two platforms, the toolchains are entirely different too for both of these mobile platforms.

Many modern-day developers use a specific set of technology that is used to build web applications: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There are different frameworks that fall under the category commonly known as Hybrid applications. You can use almost one set of source code for developing the application for both iOS and Android platforms.

In this React Native tutorial you’ll learn how to build native apps based on the hugely popular React JavaScript library.

What makes React Native different from other frameworks such as PhoneGap (Apache Cordova) or Appcelerator Titanium, that use JavaScript to create iOS apps?

1. (Unlike PhoneGap) with React Native your code may be written in JavaScript but the app’s UI is fully native. It doesn’t have the drawbacks typically associated with a hybrid HTML5 app.
2. Additionally (unlike Titanium), React introduces a novel, radical and highly functional approach to constructing user interfaces. Your UI is simply a function of the current app state.

React Native brings the React paradigm to mobile app development. It’s goal isn’t to write the code once and run it on any platform. The goal is to learn-once (the React way) and write-anywhere. An important distinction to make.

The community has even added tools such as Expo and Create React Native App to help you quickly build React Native apps without having to touch Xcode or Android Studio!

While you can write React Native apps for iOS and Android, this tutorial only covers Android. You can also check out our tutorial focused on React Native for iOS.

The tutorial takes you through the process of building an Android app for searching UK property listings:

Don’t worry if you’ve never written any JavaScript or used the CSS-like properties you’ll see. This tutorial will guide you through every step and provide resources where you can learn more.

Ready to get going? Read on!