My favorite technology from the RV Co-Pilot project that we are working with is React Native. It’s definitely the biggest part of our application as it is what allows us to create the app in the first place. React Native is an agnostic framework that allows development for both iOS and Android at the same time. I think this is amazing considering both of my teammates have Apple phones and I’m running Android, yet we can all contribute equally and test on our own devices. This also means we don’t technically need to run an emulator and deal with the hassle that comes with it.
Unfortunately, we have come across some issues not specific to React Native but the integration of other services into our app. A service like Google Maps is a great boon to our campsite tracking app and, we would argue, necessary to it. An issue came up with it when we tried to enhance the map by showing your location on start up. Both of the operating systems we developed for required a different path to allow locations on the system settings. This required a bit of research and testing but is now fully implemented and working.
If anything were to be done to make the framework better it would be to fully incorporate the differences between iOS and Android. This obviously requires a ton of extra work for the people that maintain React Native and may not even be a feasible idea in the grand scheme of things. But if their goal is to be fully agnostic and be able to incorporate any service seamlessly between operating systems, this would make the framework even more amazing to use.
If you’d like to check it out for yourself, you can see the overview here: https://reactnative.dev/.
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