React Native is a fast growing JavaScript framework which enables developers to create cross-platform apps. At its recent F8 developer conference, Facebook announced that React Native support is coming to major operating systems as an open source project. The SDK has already been made available for iOS and Android developers.
Samsung are currently working to bring React Native integration to the Tizen platform, and also Microsoft is working to bring it to its Universal Platform. It is said that you will be able to use more that 85% of code between supported platforms.
Under the hood, React Native enables app builders to declare their UI using JavaScript and React, and the framework translates the React DOM from JavaScript into method calls to view managers on the native platform, allowing developers to proxy direct calls to native modules through JavaScript function invocations. In the case of React Native on UWP, the view managers and native modules are implemented in C#, and the view managers instantiate and operate on XAML elements. We use Chakra for the JavaScript runtime, which can be consumed by any UWP app without any additional binaries being added to the app package.
As Tizen takes full advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, it makes sense to be able to compile your app to this platform. Tizen also supports many device types such as Smart TVs, Smartwatches and the Internet of Things (IoT), so devs have a wider range of products that they can target. More than 250,000 developers across the world have employed React Native to build iOS, Android and Web apps.
