Facebook deployed ReactJS in 2011 while facing challenges in delivering Facebook ads. FaxJS was the first prototype of ReactJS which was created by Jordan Walke, an engineer at Facebook. Slowly it paved the way for the development of React Native. React Native is the framework while ReactJS is just the JavaScript-based library supporting both the client-side and server-side development.
In the year 2020, ReactJS was used by 8787 industry leaders and 22.4% of the developer community voted it as the most wanted framework. React native has remained a popular choice for cross-platform mobile development frameworks in the last three years. As per a survey, about 40.14% of developers reported using ReactJS worldwide in 2021.
Though both are similar at the base level, if you are not particularly clear about their key differences, then this post will walk you through that and also the merits of using both. But, before getting started, let’s look at the basic overview of both below.
What Is ReactJS?
A JavaScript library specifically designed to develop the interface of web and mobile-based apps, ReactJS utilizes reusable components to make robust app structures. In other words, it is a JS library responsible for rendering UI components. It can be used for both frontend and backend development. Developed by Facebook in 2011, ReactJS has since been a popular choice among developers.
See Also: Progressive Web Apps (PWA): Benefits and Challenges
Let’s take a look at the prime features and benefits of using ReactJS below.
5 Notable Features of ReactJS:
- Reusable components – One of the most loved benefits of using ReactJS is that it facilitates reusing development components. Code reusability further ensures faster development at lower costs because developers can reuse codes for similar app components. Furthermore, it also saves a lot of testing and debugging time for developers, thereby ensuring seamless and cost-efficient work for React.JS development firms.
- SEO-friendly – Web apps developed with ReactJS are automatically SEO-friendly. ReactJS also offers several tools that could be used to build SEO-friendly sites. The credit for the SEO-friendliness of ReactJS web apps and sites goes to the fact that ReactJS is able to render web pages swiftly. This improves the page loading speed as well as the bounce rate.
- Virtual DOM – Virtual DOM (Direct Object Model) is a visualizing agreement of data inputs and outputs. ReactJS is capable of using JS to generate HTML and it also utilizes the tree reconciliation process to virtually render HTML.
- Thus, ReactJS functions faster than the full refresh model conventionally used by developers because the virtual DOM only refreshes a page partly. Ultimately, this prevents the entries of the DOM to update repeatedly, thereby making web apps perform faster.
- One-way data-binding – ReactJS facilitates one-way data binding to keep things swift and modular. When developers are designing an app, they can bind child components with parent components. This provides better control to the developers when building a web app.
Top 10 Benefits of Using ReactJS:
- Web apps and websites developed with the help of ReactJS have better performance.
- It enables the reuse of components and codes, thereby making development an easier and less time-consuming process.
- It improves the debugging speed.
- Developers find it easy to use JavaScript language for both frontend and server-side development and its entire ecosystem.
- ReactJS is easily readable.
- Web apps developed with ReactJS are naturally SEO-friendly.
- ReactJS has a short learning curve.
- ReactJS is easy to render especially when developing high-load apps.
- It offers a useful developer toolset and has a robust community.
- The downward flow of data is responsible for keeping the parent structure stable, thus keeping the app performance high.
What Is React Native?
Described as an open-source framework, React Native is primarily popular among mobile app developers for native mobile app development. Also introduced by Facebook in 2015, React Native utilizes ReactJS for base attraction; however, the only difference lies in the library components. React Native even helps in building native and cross-platform mobile apps with the help of reusable components.
See Also: How Many Companies Use React Native?
4 Notable Features of React Native:
- JavaScript coding – The advanced JavaScript V8 engine makes it easy for developers to build native mobile apps as they don’t need to make an effort in code compilation. Also, most developers are familiar with JavaScript nowadays. Further, there is a large community of JS users in the field of app programming.
- Enterprise mobility solutions – Being a free & open-source framework with an extensive community of developers contributing significantly to it, React Native excels in all the necessary ingredients that you need for your native mobile app development process.
- Cost-effective MVP – Building the Minimum Viable Product with React Native saves a lot of development time because developers can reuse app components and codes. They also don’t need to write separate codes for Android & iOS platforms. Besides this, the app maintenance cost is also reduced for both mobile platforms.
- NPM library – React Native largely relies on the Node Package Manager, thereby increasing the ease of installation and application.
Top 7 Benefits of Using React Native:
- React native offers plenty of Native Modules and Components to improve the performance of mobile apps.
- It offers extensive community support.
- Cross-platform development is easy with React Native as developers can reuse codes once written for one platform on another one easily.
- Developers can even add the React Native UI components to older apps’ existing codes and revamp them.
- It is developer-friendly because developers only need to be acquainted with JavaScript, a few platform-based APIs, some native UI elements, and maybe a few design patterns.
- React Native is moveable which means that developers can export an app from React Native’s environment to Android Studio or Xcode.
- React Native facilitates flexibility. Therefore, developers can start right from where someone else left working on an app. Thus, this helps to update and upgrade mobile apps easily and frequently.
ReactJS vs React Native: The Key Differences
Below we have jotted down the major differences between ReactJS and React Native.
| ReactJS | React Native |
| ReactJS is platform-independent. | React Native is platform-dependent. |
| It offers higher security levels. | The security structure is slightly less advanced. |
| ReactJS facilitates higher levels of animations with the help of CSS. | For React Native, developers have to depend on APIs. |
| This allows the development of a high-performing and engaging UI layer. | The entire framework is enabled for cross-platform development. |
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Conclusion
Overall, ReactJS and React Native both have their individual advantages and disadvantages. While ReactJS is a web development framework, React Native has played a wide role in being a mobile development framework.
Ultimately, it is advisable for businesses to perform their own thorough research to figure out whether they need to go with ReactJS or React Native that would suffice their development needs.
