Preface

Welcome to the wonderful world of React Native apps! Thanks to this technology, you can have your own native app up and running in a matter of minutes. Don’t worry if this is the first time you are hearing about React Native. Basic knowledge of JavaScript will be enough to hit the ground running. Together, we will go over the important concepts of React and React Native and we will learn about the React Native ecosystem, setup, and tooling. By the end of Chapter 4, Styling and Populating the Funbook App, you will have a fully functioning social-media clone app in your hands.

This is where stuff starts getting interesting. Our app has a few API endpoints and needs to manage data objects across multiple components and screens. This situation is very common in medium-sized and large applications. Because of this, there are many solutions to this common problem. A lot of developers use battle-tested and renowned open-source libraries, such as Redux or MobX. Others look for innovative ideas and land on XState or Jotai for their projects. Others still use built-in React functionalities or concentrate on data fetching instead of state management with the help of React Query. Throughout this book, we will put ourselves in the shoes of all of these types of developers. We will pick one specific functionality from the app – the like button with the list of liked images – and we will try out the open source libraries listed here, one by one.

When we emerge victorious at the end of this book, you will have a very good understanding of different ways to manage states in React Native apps. I hope you will also have an idea of what you prefer, and why. Redux, MobX, XState, Jotai, and React Query were created to solve the same problem, but their creators approached it very differently. I also hope you will simply enjoy this book as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.