Struc­ture of a React Nat­ive App: Everything You Need To Know

Do you struggle with optim­ising app per­form­ance, organ­ising code effect­ively, or deliv­er­ing a seam­less user experience?

If so, you might be miss­ing some­thing. The under­stand­ing of the struc­ture of React Nat­ive app

Donʼt worry, we are here to help!

Our com­pre­hens­ive guide dives deep into the intric­a­cies of React Nat­ive app struc­ture, equip­ping you with the know­ledge to over­come these challenges.

Dis­cov­er how to build scal­able, well-organ­ised, and high-per­form­ing apps on React Nat­ive with the right struc­ture that wow your users. This guide will also help you if you are plan­ning to con­vert web­site to react nat­ive app.

Struc­ture Of React Nat­ive App-Why You Should Pay Spe­cial Attention?

Have you ever wondered what pro­ject struc­ture is all about? Letʼs under­stand it easily.

In a nut­shell, the pro­ject struc­ture is the blue­print, back­bone, or skel­et­on of your soft­ware pro­ject. Itʼs like organ­ising your closet or work­space, but instead of clothes, youʼre organ­ising files, folders, and resources for your React Nat­ive app.

Ima­gine hav­ing a well-struc­tured pro­ject folder where every file has its place. Screens, com­pon­ents, assets, stylesheets, and all required con­fig­ur­a­tion files, are all neatly organ­ized and eas­ily access­ible. Sounds per­fect, right?

Hav­ing a sol­id React Nat­ive pro­ject struc­ture gives you lots of benefits.

First off, it keeps your entire code­base organ­ized. For­get about dig­ging into a messy pile of files to find that spe­cif­ic code youʼre look­ing for. With a clear struc­ture, you know exactly where to find that elu­sive com­pon­ent or con­fig­ur­a­tion file.

The pro­ject struc­ture describes how you organ­ize your files, folders, and dir­ect­or­ies with­in your pro­ject. It also describes what type of files it con­tains, how your mod­ules are divided into sub­mod­ules, and how lar­ger dir­ect­or­ies are grouped.

Letʼs see how a new React Nat­ive app looks in its ini­tial pro­ject structure.

Also Read: Boost Your App Devel­op­ment with a High-Qual­ity React Nat­ive UI Library

1. Base Dependency

Base depend­en­cies are the lib­rary com­pon­ents and pack­ages required to set up and run your React Nat­ive pro­ject. To main­tain a stable devel­op­ment envir­on­ment, you must under­stand and con­fig­ure these depend­en­cies as per your pro­ject requirement.

• react-nav­ig­a­tion — For easy Applic­a­tion navigation
• redux — For Applic­a­tion state management
• redux-thunk —  For Enabling asyn­chron­ous dis­patch­ing of actions
• jest — For Javas­cript testing
• reselect —  A simple Select­or lib­rary for Redux
• axios — To handle Http Client
• fastlane — For Auto­ma­tion tool

2. Folder Structure

A well-organ­ized folder struc­ture is essen­tial to main­tain a clean and man­age­able code­base. Here is how com­mon folder struc­ture for a React Nat­ive app:

Source: Folder Struc­ture of React Nat­ive App

assets/:

This folder con­tains all the stat­ic assets, includ­ing images or fonts, that you are using in the app.

components/:

Here, you can store reusable UI com­pon­ents that are used across mul­tiple screens.

screens/:

Each app screen should have its own folder with­in the screens/ dir­ect­ory, with its asso­ci­ated com­pon­ents and styles.

navigation/:

This folder holds the nav­ig­a­tion-related code, includ­ing the con­fig­ur­a­tion for rout­ing and nav­ig­at­ing between screens.

utils/:

Util­ity func­tions or help­er mod­ules can be placed in this folder for easy access and code reuse.

state/:

If you are using a state man­age­ment lib­rary like Redux, this folder can con­tain actions, redu­cers, and store configurations.

Also Read: Top 10 React Nat­ive Apps : Build & Deploy Guide

Struc­ture Vs Archi­tec­ture: What Is The Dif­fer­ence Between Two? 

Often­times, begin­ners will con­fuse the struc­ture and archi­tec­ture for react nat­ive app and use the term inter­change­ably. How­ever, they are both dif­fer­ent. In the earli­er sec­tion, we out­lined the struc­ture of React Nat­ive app. Now letʼs explore the archi­tec­ture of React Nat­ive app before you plan to con­vert web­site to react nat­ive app.

It was Octo­ber 2022 when the offi­cial React Nat­ive com­munity launched the new React Nat­ive V0.70 archi­tec­ture with added per­form­ance and flex­ib­il­ity into the frame­work. It was designed to help developers over­come any draw­backs of pre­vi­ous architecture.

The new archi­tec­ture also brought an improved JavaS­cript Engine, Her­mes. The aim of the new archi­tec­ture is to enhance per­form­ance and bring apps near­er to nat­ives alike.

Fol­low­ing are the pil­lar ele­ments of the new architecture.

1. Fab­ric

Fab­ric is a term often mis­un­der­stood in React Nat­ive. It actu­ally refers to just one part of React Nat­ive, spe­cific­ally the UI layer.

The UI lay­er is respons­ible for dis­play­ing and man­aging the visu­al ele­ments of an app. In the past, this lay­er was writ­ten in JavaS­cript, which had some per­form­ance lim­it­a­tions. To address this, React Nat­ive intro­duced Fabric.

The term, Fab­ric is a part of React Nat­ive, spe­cific­ally a UI lay­er of the archi­tec­ture. But often mis­un­der­stood as an entire React Nat­ive struc­ture. The Fab­ric lay­er is respons­ible for man­aging and dis­play­ing the visu­al ele­ments of the app.

Also Read: React Nat­ive Tutori­als — Learn to Build React Nat­ive Apps

2. Turbo Module

The new archi­tec­ture derived the Tur­boMod­ule from an old archi­tec­ture with added new integ­ra­tion and beha­viour. Tur­boMod­ules are best known for their lazy-load­ing functionality.

These mod­ules help JavaS­cript to load and main­tain the needed mod­ule at exe­cu­tion time. This helps reduce the star­tup time for pro­grams requir­ing the large nat­ive mod­ule for execution.

3. Code­gen 

The code­gen is a tool avail­able in archi­tec­ture. It helps developers to avoid writ­ing repet­it­ive code. It gen­er­ates scaf­fold­ing code that saves developers lots of time. Whenev­er the developer builds an Android or iOS app, React Nat­ive invokes Code­gen automatically.

The developer can also run the mod­ule script to check what type of code and files are get­ting gen­er­ated. This hap­pens mostly when the developer works on Turbo Nat­ive mod­ules and Fab­ric Nat­ive components.

4. Bridge­less

The old archi­tec­ture con­tained a Bridge for data trans­mis­sion. The new archi­tec­ture removes Bridge from React Nat­ive. The major reas­on behind this change is that the Bridge was devel­op­ing unne­ces­sary issues and doubts while trans­fer­ring data and res­ult­ing in delays.

The new archi­tec­ture replaces the Bridge lay­er with React Nat­ive JSI to enable dir­ect com­mu­nic­a­tion between the JavaS­cript and Nat­ive code. This provides flex­ib­il­ity in work­ing with JavaS­cript engines and improves Nat­ive com­pon­ent interaction.

That said, You might have a doubt. Why Use React For Front End Devel­op­ment? Letʼs get you some answers.

Why Use React For Front End Devel­op­ment?

React has taken the developer world by storm, and for a good reas­on. In this sec­tion, weʼll uncov­er why React has become the top choice for build­ing inter­act­ive user interfaces.

From its mod­u­lar com­pon­ents to its seam­less ren­der­ing, weʼll explore why React is a front-end powerhouse!

1. Time-Sav­ing When It Comes To Development

A developer’s pro­ductiv­ity is the most import­ant thing in pro­ject devel­op­ment. And, react nat­ive allows you to reuse the com­pon­ents and tools so the devel­op­ment time is faster as you can build vari­ous functionalities.

There are mul­tiple devel­op­ment tools avail­able in the mar­ket for React you can use to speed up your devel­op­ment work. For example, you can use the React Developer Tools exten­sion to make your cod­ing work much easier.

2. Rich User-Interfaces

Do you know 88% of users will nev­er return to your site after a bad exper­i­ence? Ima­gine los­ing 88% of your user base just because of a bad UI.

For­tu­nately for you, React makes it easy to devel­op rich user inter­faces with­in a short time. How? Using fron­tend lib­rar­ies like Boot­strap, Chakra, and Tail­wind. So, nev­er lose a user to a bad user exper­i­ence again.

3. Built-in developer tool set

Face­book under­stands that learn­ing emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies and work­ing with them in real-life pro­jects can bene­fit every developer. And for this, they have added much-needed React Nat­ive tools and a Chrome dev tool set.

These React tools are there to help the developer to dis­cov­er all child and par­ent com­pon­ents of each func­tion, observe com­pon­ent hier­arch­ies and inspect com­pon­ents’ cur­rent state.

Choos­ing The Right Backend: What is the Best Backend For React Nat­ive App?

As much as fron­tend is import­ant, backend is equally import­ant is cre­at­ing resi­li­ent apps. Here are the top backend options that seam­lessly integ­rate with React Native.

1. Node.js  

React Nat­iveʼs backend runs on JavaS­cript. Node.js’ scalab­il­ity and effi­cient event-driv­en archi­tec­ture allow developers to build robust and effi­cient apps hav­ing world-class archi­tec­ture for react nat­ive apps.

2. Fire­base  

Powered by Google and trus­ted by mil­lions of busi­nesses, Fire­base helps you build and grow apps and games that users love.

3. Her­oku

Provid­ing a reli­able and flex­ible host­ing solu­tion for React Nat­ive apps, Her­oku sim­pli­fies backend deploy­ment and scaling.

4. Express.js

Provid­ing a robust fea­ture set for web and mobile applic­a­tions, Express is a min­im­al and flex­ible Node.js framework.

5. Django

An open-source, Python-based web frame­work, Django, fol­lows the mod­el-tem­plate-views archi­tec­tur­al pattern.

Con­clu­sion

Under­stand­ing React Nat­ive app struc­ture and archi­tec­ture is cru­cial for developers and busi­ness own­ers. Itʼs not just about boost­ing per­form­ance and giv­ing users a stel­lar exper­i­ence, but also about keep­ing our code in the right shape and ensur­ing scalability.

After know­ing the appʼs struc­ture, we can design robust, scal­able, and easy-to-main­tain solu­tions by using best-in-class react nat­ive app tem­plates or con­vert web­site to react nat­ive apps in the long run. Plus, hav­ing a deep under­stand­ing of the archi­tec­ture lets us make smart decisions, col­lab­or­ate smoothly with our team, and tap into cool fea­tures like the vir­tu­al DOM.

So, letʼs embrace this know­ledge, unlock our full poten­tial as React Nat­ive Devel­op­ment Ser­vices in the UK, and cre­ate jaw-drop­ping apps that users will love. also read about Which Mobile App Devel­op­ment Frame­work Is Right For You?