After 5 Years Since Launch, React Native Announces Re-Architecture

Facebook, after spending five years in the cross platform industry with its React Native Framework is finally coming out with a framework restructure that is set to provide flexibility and better integration of the framework with the native infrastructures in the Hybrid JavaScript/Native apps.

The news bodes well with React Native App Development companies across the world. The re-architecture will keep the developers who were jumping ships for Flutter, attached with React Native. And has got points ahead in the table of comparison between Flutter and React Native.   

“With this project, we’ll apply what we’ve learned over the last 5 years and incrementally bring our architecture to a more modern one,” Sophie Alpert, Facebook engineering manager wrote in a blog post State of React Native 2018. “We’re rewriting many of React Native’s internals, but most of the changes are under the hood: existing React Native apps will continue to work with few or no changes.”

One of the main issues that came associated with React native mobile app framework was of Asynchronous Bridge. While it caused no short term problem, the approach was set to cause problems in the future.

Asynchronous bridge prevents you from integrating JavaScript logic with various native APIs that are expecting synchronous answers. Batched bridge that which queues the native calls makes it difficult for the React Native apps to call functions that are implemented natively while a serializable bridge equates to unnecessary copying. For apps that are built with both with the existing app code and React Native, these restrictions can be very frustrating.

{Read Also: Mobile Application Development Guide: Everything Worth Knowing}

To lower the frustrations of the React Native App Development Companies, the framework has been re-architectured with three significant internal changes –

• New Threading Model – In place of every UI update being called in to perform the work on three different threads, the re-architecture has made it possible to call the updates synchronously in JavaScript on any of the threads in vase of high-priority updates while the low-priority work will still be kept off the main thread for maintaining responsiveness.
• Newer Async Rendering Abilities – To simplify the asynchronous data handling process and to provide multiple rendering priorities.
• Lightweight and Fater Bridge – This will enable direct calls between JavaScript and Native which will make it a lot easier to develop debugging tools such as cross-language stack traces.

Along with these internal changes, the brand is also aiming at making the React Native mobile app framework slimmer on JavaScript in order to fit well with the JavaScript ecosystem – a move which will include making bundler and VM swappable.

Also, hearing to the mass request for better documentation, the brand has promised to work on rolling out thorough documentation in the coming time.  

While Facebook refrained from giving details about these changes, they showed a hopefulness in terms of building features becoming straightforward once the changes are made.

The social media giant projects that while today it is impossible to integrate gesture handling and native navigation with using complex hacks but once all the changes are developed and made live, closer integration will be made possible.

Wish to take advantage of the restructuring? Contact our team of React Native App Development Experts, Today.