React Native Blog • Sep 14, 2015

React Native for Android

Article Summary

Facebook just dropped React Native for Android, completing the cross-platform puzzle that started with iOS earlier in 2015. Their first test? Building a production app used by millions of advertisers.

After releasing React Native for iOS, Facebook announces Android support and shares the story of building Ads Manager, their first fully React Native and cross-platform app. The team spent a year in production validating the framework before this public release.

Key Takeaways

Ads Manager became Facebook's first fully React Native and cross-platform app
React Native ran in Facebook production for over a year before Android release
Declarative UI components and fast dev cycles now available on Android
Single codebase targets both iOS and Android while maintaining native performance

Critical Insight

React Native for Android brings proven, production-tested cross-platform development to millions of advertisers' primary business tool.

The full post reveals specific lessons learned from building a mission-critical business app that had to work flawlessly across platforms.

About This Article

Problem

Facebook needed to bring React Native to Android users after proving it on iOS. The challenge was that Android and iOS have different architectures and ecosystems, so the framework had to work across both.

Solution

Facebook used what it learned from a year of React Native on iOS to build Android support. This let developers write UI components once and deploy them natively to both platforms without rewriting for each one.

Impact

The Ads Manager app ran the same React Native codebase on both iOS and Android for millions of Facebook advertisers. It showed that cross-platform development could handle real business needs at scale.