Harry Tormey

Hot reloading—the ability to push over the air updates to published apps and the promise of having your app “just work” out of the box on Android as well as iOS—make React Native a tempting proposition for frontend developers. But what do you do when you have to integrate React Native into a large existing native code base?

This talk is from the perspective of an experienced native iOS developer who has worked with React Native to ship several cross-platform Greenfield and brownfield apps.

Things I will talk about: 
- Overview of the challenges involved in integrating React Native into an existing app
- A real life case study integrating React Native into a native app with millions of users
- Strategies for passing data and events in a brownfield app
- Strategies for deciding what’s a good candidate to port to React Native and what’s not
- Working with build systems like CocoaPods
- Dealing with an existing navigation system
- How to do CodePush in a brownfield app
- How to handle navigation in a brownfield app
- Best practices for working with Native engineers
- Example brownfield application
Extra notes: This is a new talk based on work I did for a client with a large existing native app used by millions of users.

2018

React Native EU

Brownfield: Lessons from the Trenches

Hot reloading--the ability to push over the air updates to published apps and the promise of having your app “just work” out of the box on Android as well as iOS--make React Native a tempting proposition for frontend developers. But what do you do when you have to integrate React Native into a large existing native code base?

This talk is from the perspective of an experienced native iOS developer who has worked with React Native to ship several cross-platform Greenfield and brownfield apps.

Things I will talk about:

- Overview of the challenges involved in integrating React Native into an existing app.
- A real life case study integrating React Native into a native app with millions of users.
- Strategies for passing data and events in a brownfield app.
- Working with build systems like CocoaPods
- How to do CodePush in a brownfield app
- How to handle navigation in a brownfield app
- Best practices for working with Native engineers
- Example brownfield application

Chain React

Strategies For Using React Native In A Brownfield App

The promise of writing code for iOS and having it “just work” out of the box on Android is a tempting one. That along with hot reloading code and the ability to push over the air updates to published apps make React Native a tempting proposition. This sounds too good to be true so what’s the catch? 

React Native is a framework for building native apps using Javascript. Many native developers rightly associate hybrid Javascript apps with disappointing consumer experiences and frustrating development environments. Over the years the same promises have been made by many other Javascript based frameworks, so why is React Native any different? 

This talk will be from the perspective of an experienced iOS developer who has been working with React Native for the last 2 years and has shipped several cross platform apps with it.

Reactathon

An iOS Developer's Opinion of React Native

React Native is great for writing cross platform apps. Certain use-cases, however, still require native code. Together we will look at how to evaluate when native code is the better choice. I’ll cover strategies for dealing with performance issues and how to handle background tasks like geolocation.

The promise of writing an app in Javascript for iOS and having it “just work” out of the box on Android is a tempting one. That along with hot reloading and the ability to push over the air updates to published apps make React Native a tempting proposition, especially for web developers who are unfamiliar with native development and want to leverage their knowledge of React. However certain use-cases still require native code. 

Together we will take a look at some of these exceptions and how to evaluate when native code is the better choice out of necessity or performance concerns.

This talk will be from the perspective of an experienced iOS developer who has been working with React Native and has shipped several cross platform apps with native components.

Things I will talk about:
- Overview of how React Native works
- Overview of iOS/Android application states and how that effects your apps design
- App use-cases that require native code
- Example app with native code that uses geolocation in the background (code available on github)
- How to use native tools to profile your app (with example app, available on github)
- Strategies for dealing with performance issues
- Cooking demo where I port a Javascript component to Native and show differences in performance (code available on github)