What is the difference between React.js and React Native?
In this article
This article explores React.js and React Native, two popular frameworks for building user interfaces. It guides you through their functionalities, limitations, and key differences to help you choose the right tool for your project.
Confused between React.js vs React Native? Want to know which is better?
Well, is it fair to judge a person without knowing them? No, right. So, to make the right decision between React JS and React Native, let us look at what React JS and React Native individually are and then figure out the answers to the questions above.
React’s history dates back to 2011, when it was created by Jordan Walke, a software engineer at Facebook. React was first deployed on Facebook’s newsfeed in 2011 and on Instagram.com in 2012. React Native was launched in 2015, two years after the team open-sourced React.js, and its popularity increased in no time.
What can you find in this article?
- What is React.js?
- Advantages of React.js
- Limitations of React.js
- What is React Native?
- Features of React Native
- Limitations of React Native
- Difference between React.js and React Native
1. What is React.js?
React.js is a user interface library written in JavaScript. It is a single-page application platform that allows you to build reusable user interface components. It’s responsible for managing the view layer in web and smartphone apps.
Designers can utilize React.js to construct gigantic web applications that can adjust information without reloading the page. It only functions with the user interfaces of the program.
2. Advantages of React.js
React.js is quick, adaptable, adaptable, impressive, and has an active developer community that is quickly growing. Following are the attractive features of React or React.js:
- Declarative: React allows you to make changes and create interactive UIs quite easily. You can design simplistic views for each state of your application, and React.js will update and make the necessary components as your data changes. Declarative views increase the predictability and debuggability of your code.
- Component-based: You can create encapsulated modules that maintain their own state to create complex user interfaces. Also, you can easily transfer rich data through your app and hold the state out of the DOM since component logic is written in JavaScript rather than templates.
- React.js integrates with other systems and can be used both on the client and server-side.
- Easy to learn and re-use code: Since we don’t make assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, you can use React to create new features without rewriting old code. It has a ReactDOM library specifically for working with the browser’s DOM, created for working with web browsers.
3. Limitations of React.js
There are two sides to a coin. Some limitations associated with React JS are:
- Only covers the app view layer
One of its most prominent limitations is that it only covers the app’s view layer. One needs to choose other technologies simultaneously to get a complete development toolkit.
- JSX as a barrier
It depends on person to person, but some developers find the infinite templating and JSX inconvenient.
- Poor Documentation
The technology of React.js is highly dynamic and is continually upgraded and enhanced. While this keeps it up-to-date, there is no time to record them properly.
4. What is React Native?
Let us take a peek into React Native now. React-native is a mobile app development platform that only uses Javascript. It has the same design as React.js and allows you to incorporate a rich mobile UI library and declarative components. It is built with the same basic UI components as standard iOS and Android apps.
5. Features of React Native
Commendable features of React Native include:
- Written in JavaScript and Native code is used to render
Since React natives render local stage UI, your application can utilize similar local stage APIs as other applications. Unlike other platforms, React Native can maintain two platforms and share a common technology—React.
- Allows you to create genuinely native apps
React Native allows you to create genuinely native apps without compromising the users’ experience. It includes a core set of platform-independent native components, such as View, Text, and Image, that map to the platform’s native UI building blocks.
- Seamless Cross-Platform:
React components use React’s declarative UI paradigm and JavaScript to wrap existing native code and communicate with native APIs. It opens up native app development to entirely new teams of developers and allows current native teams to work even more quickly.
- Fast Refresh: You can see your changes as soon as you save.
6. Limitations of React Native
There’s no denying that React Native is one of the most common frameworks today. But that doesn’t mean it’s without restrictions. React Native has a long way to go until it can be considered a limit-free framework. Some of the limitations are as follows:
- Requires Native Developers: React Native is a cross-platform framework. Since it requires some portion of development using native app development, thus React Native App Developers are required. Usually, this need arises while making a heavy application.
If you wish to continue with the React-native framework without a native app developer, you will have to make the application lightweight.
- Different Behavior Of the Same Component:
Another drawback that could cause a stumbling block in creating hybrid mobile apps is that some of the framework’s components may be platform-based.
As a consequence, these components can work differently on their native platform. It might happen when the React Native framework is used to build hybrid mobile applications and is expected to give the same results on iOS and Android.
- Need Developer Expertise:
It’s also a disadvantage because developing effective mobile apps with React Native necessitates familiarity with three different platforms. The developer will be required to switch requests from Native to JavaScript code and vice versa during the application’s execution.
- Dependency On Third-Party Libraries:
Since native platforms lack the features, using a hybrid mobile app development framework often necessitates the use of external or third-party libraries.
7. Difference between React.js and React Native
Now that we have discussed them in detail, let’s take a look at how these frameworks differ from each other?
| One of the USPs, from a business standpoint, is its ability to offer lightning-fast speed for applications and websites designed with the DOM, or Document Object Model. | One of the most attractive advantages of using React Native to develop apps and websites is the ability to produce platform-specific code. |
| When you use React.js, it builds an in-memory arrangement cache, which computes the differences and then seamlessly updates the browser’s displayed DOM. Then, if any change renders the entire page, only the modified sub-components are rendered. | When you use React Native to create an app, the application senses the platform it’s running on automatically and produces the appropriate code for the appropriate platform efficiently. |
| It is primarily used to develop web applications. | Mostly in use for developing mobile applications. |
| It possesses a JavaScript library that allows programmers to construct an interactive and high-performing user interface layer. | It comes with built-in animation libraries that makes the process as seamless as it could be. |
| The virtual DOM is used to render browser javascript. | Native APIs are used to render components on mobile devices. |
| It is regarded to be highly secure and safe. | The security is good, but is not at par with React.js. |
| It uses HTML for implementation of its code | It doesn’t use HTML and has its own syntax. |
| Can be executed on all platforms with ease. | Not platform independent. Takes significantly more time and efforts to be executed on all platforms. |
| Reactjs is the best choice for developing a high-performing, interactive, and sensitive UI for web interfaces. | If you want to give your mobile apps a completely native feel, React Native is the way to go. |
Conclusion
Both React.js and React Native are essential foundations for app and web creation. They’re gaining traction with each passing day, thanks to their versatile functionalities and a growing ecosystem of libraries.
In the end, React.js is best for creating interactive, high-performing, responsive web interfaces, while React Native is designed to give your mobile apps a genuinely native feel.
You can choose based on your requirements.
Thank you to our guest author Harikrishna Kundariya. He is a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His experience
enables him to provide awesome digital solutions.
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