I built my first React Native app

Hello Developers,

This is my first post on Dev.to and it's about a very first app I developed using React Native. It's a simple and basic calculator app which does, yes you guessed it right, simple calculations.

What I learned:

Well, this is just a basic app so I did not learn React Native in much depth. But this app helped me learn things like,

• React Native syntax
• A different way to style components (without using CSS files)
• How to pass values between two different components
• How to set component state

What I missed from the web development world:

I really missed a simple way to style buttons using React Native. React Native Button component does not have style property of its own.

(Although, I learned that you can always create a custom button using TouchableOpacity)

If anybody is interested please check out this cool calculator app here

zerosand1s / ReactNative-Calculator

A simple and basic calculator app using React Native

Calculator

A simple and basic calculator application using React Native.

Run the application using react-native run-ios

Check out the application images on different devices

iPhone SE

iPhone X

View on GitHub

And this is what my calculator app looks like

Comments

[andresefr24]

I really recommend to use styled components. Makes styling a walk in the park, and with its theme provider you con centralize every major style statement. The syntax is good ol' css and it's plug n' play.
Give it a shot.
If you wanna get more experimental with it, i suggest that you make the provided theme a state that can be managed.

[Islam Gamal]

Could you please mention a good tutorial to learn styled components? And if you think it's better than css modules?

[Gareth Brown]

I would also recommend styled components. The getting started page on the styled components home page is a good place to start! styled-components.com/docs/basics#...

[Harshal Gangurde]

I appreciate your recommendation Gareth. Thanks.

[K]

I use glamorous-native, but I think for the next project I would stop using styling libraries all together.

I just don't have the feeling they add much value.

[Harshal Gangurde]

Thanks for the recommendation, @andresefr24 . I will surely check out styled components.

[Ben Halpern]

Congrats!

[Harshal Gangurde]

Thanks, Ben.

[David Sima]

Congratulations! It looks really good. I have a question about React Native. Can you use it to also build a Windows application?

[Harshal Gangurde]

Thanks, David. I am not 100% sure but a quick Google search showed me this repo github.com/Microsoft/react-native-.... Check it out.