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Muhammad Ali (Nerdjfpb)
Muhammad Ali (Nerdjfpb)

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at blog.nerdjfpb.com

Learn React Native In One Tutorial

This will be a long tutorial about React Native. I’ll keep adding new part of it everyday after writing it. Find the codes in - https://github.com/nerdjfpb/react-native-series

Table Of Contents

Prerequisite

Knowledge about JavaScript(Specially ES6), React JS.

Tools Needed

  • Windows/Mac/Linux
  • Node LTS 10+ Version
  • Android Studio for android emulator or iOS emulator

I’m following the React Native Documentation! So let’s start…

Day 1

Simply, React Native is a JavaScript library which helps to create web, android & iOS code from one codebase. We need JavaScript and React knowledge to start it. Hope you know about both of these.

You can see look at

For understanding JavaScript & React JS!

Installing

To install the react native we can install directly using react native cli, but we’ll install it using expo because expo gives us some extra benefits over react native cli. Installing expo is really easy.

npm install -g expo-cli
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Create project

Creating a new project is really easy with the expo. Just initial a project with expo init projectName then go to directory using cd projectName and finally start with npm start or expo start
Easy right ?

expo init YourProjectName
cd YourProjectName
npm start / EXPO START
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Folder Structure

Don’t worry to much about the folder structure for now. We’ll start from editing the app.js for now.
Alt Text

Change a little

Let’s change a little just in the Text
Alt Text

RESULT

We can run easily the project

npm Start 
or
expo Start
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Alt Text

You can see the graphical version here

Back to table of content

Day 2

Today we are going to learn about the stylesheet of React Native. To style the app we can’t use directly css properties here, but yes we can use the css but we need to twerk a little bit.

Now we are going to change a little on the code and we are going to see some style changes. First we are going add a little class on the Text

Alt Text

We are going to add some style now

Alt Text

Now we can run this using npm start or expo start and the result –

Alt Text

In css we use kebab_case but in react native we use camelCase. This is the different. Now we can style whatever we want.

See the graphical version below –

Back to table of content

Day 3

Today we are going to learn about react state. Well if you are from react already then this is just a revision for you!

First we’ll change our function to class

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Now we can initialize state

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Printing the state value

Alt Text

Run it using

npm start
or
yarn start
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REMEMBER: WE CAN’T CHANGE STATE DIRECTLY, WE NEED TO USE SETSTATE TO CHANGE STATE.

See the graphical version below –

Back to table of content

Originally it published on nerdjfpbblog.

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Top comments (4)

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bravemaster619 profile image
bravemaster619

Thanks for nice blog. I'm pretty much confident in React. However, I have never got my hands on React Native. Are they much different? Can I learn React Native quickly? I'm worried of whether I have to go through a book or two to open a camera or turn a torchlight on in React Native.

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colewalker profile image
Cole Walker

They're almost identical. There are a few weird things about React Native that you'll have to get used to (not using CSS, missing some properties, different names for elements, to name a few), but for the most part, everything is the same. I'd recommend giving it a try and you'll grasp it pretty quickly.

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bravemaster619 profile image
bravemaster619

Not using CSS! That's what I'm afriad of. 😬😬😬

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nerdjfpb profile image
Muhammad Ali (Nerdjfpb)

Don't worry! It will be easier for you just like me! I'm also learning and making this one! Hope we'll learn together!