What Framework suits you best?
The main problem of building a mobile app is choosing the right platform. In order to build an app that works as productively in both operating systems, IOS and Android, hybrid and cross-platform frameworks were introduced. When talking about hybrid solutions, the first tools that come to mind are React Native vs Ionic. They allow to create solutions that are significantly cheaper than native ones.
Here you will find a brief introduction into these frameworks.
React Native: Learn once, write anywhere.
React Native lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you create a rich mobile UI from declarative components. With React Native, you don’t build a “mobile web app”, an “HTML5 app”, or a “hybrid app”, you build a real mobile app that’s indistinguishable from an app built using Objective-C, Java, or Swift. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps. You just put those building blocks together using JavaScript and React.
React Native lets you build your app faster. How? Well, instead of recompiling, you can reload your app instantly. With hot reloading, you can even run new code while retaining your application state. React Native combines smoothly with components written in Objective-C, Java, or Swift. It’s simple to drop down to native code if you need to optimize a few aspects of your application. It’s also easy to build part of your app in React Native, and part of your app using native code directly – that’s how the Facebook app works.
The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about – learn once, write anywhere.
Ionic: One code base, running everywhere.
Ionic Framework offers web and native app components for building highly interactive native and progressive web apps. The Ionic Framework is a 100% free and open source project, licensed under MIT. It will always remain free to use, powered by a massive worldwide community.
- Fully Cross-Platform: Build progressive web and native mobile apps for every major app store, with one codebase. Ionic works and looks beautiful wherever it runs.
- Premier Native Plugins: Use over 120 native device features like Bluetooth, HealthKit, Finger Print Auth, and more with Cordova/PhoneGap plugins and TypeScript extensions.
- First-class Documentation: Built with real app examples, component demos, guides, and how-tos to get you up and running with mobile apps faster than ever before.
React Native vs Ionic
Performance
Regarding performance, hybrid applications -such as Ionic- are arguably slower than cross-platform ones -such as React Native-, as their speed depends on the WebView. React Native has been gaining popularity for its speed regardless of the platform.
Platform adaptability
Apps built using Ionic can be used in different platforms including Mobile, Desktop and Web. In contrast, React Native needs to be rewritten on the new platform. Developers that use React Native need to acknowledge platform-specific logic and frameworks in order to achieve native app development. It requires more effort but React Native was created to accomplish native behavior on every platform. Therefore, most of its components come with a platform-specific logic that has an equivalent in other platforms.
Language
You can build your app in Ionic by using Angular, Javascript, HTML and CSS. React Native is based on the Javascript framework React and, thus, uses Javascript code that resembles HTML but essentially isn’t; it’s called JSX.
Testing
Testing an app that uses Ionic can be done in any browser. React Native needs a device or an emulator. In both scenarios, you can observe your modifications instantly without recompiling your application.
Community
Both tools have very large communities (Ionic has AngularJS, and React Native has React), so it should be easy to find plugins or frameworks that adapt to your needs. To this day, React Native has 61,389 starts on Github and Ionic has 33,619. However, Ionic has more questions than React Native in StackOverflow. In both scenarios, you find yourself within a large community that is growing every day, so you can’t go wrong on your choice.
Conclusion
We have provided you with a quick overview of React Native vs Ionic. Which tool you decide to use will depend on your skills and the requirements of the application, among other things. If you prefer creating native apps, React Native is more effective, thanks to native rendering, which makes apps quicker and more responsive for the end-user. If you prefer using HTML and Angular, you can enjoy the benefits of building your application using Ionic.
Both platforms have numerous advantages to suit your needs.
