React Native, as a top framework for mobile app development has solidified its position among developers and has become the top choice to create high-performing, top-quality cross-platform applications. With the launch of its new architecture – Fabric, the framework is now set to undergo a whole new transformation.
React Native Fabric focuses on various advantages, performance improvements, and future preparedness that can be achieved through means like Fabric, Codegen, TurboModules, and JSI. Altogether, Fabric architecture improves the efficiency of cross-platform app development. If you are curious to know hoe, then read through this blog till the end.
What’s React Native Fabric?
Fabric is React Native’s updated rendering system, designed to improve on the old one. Its main goals are to unify more of the rendering logic using C++, work better with host platforms, and add new features for React Native. Development started in 2018, and by 2021, Facebook’s app switched to using this new renderer.
The Architecture of React Native Fabric
Native Fabric is based on a new design that separates UI updates from the JavaScript thread. This allows the UI to refresh on its own, leading to smoother animations and improved performance.
Fabric has two main React parts: Fabric Core, which handles view lifecycles and layout, and Fabric UI Manager, which manages the UI structure.
A major advantage of Fabric is incremental rendering, meaning only the parts of the UI that need updating are re-rendered, making everything faster and more efficient.
Why React Native Fabric enhances Cross-Platform App Development?
- Instant Layout and Effects Handling
In cross-platform app development, creating adaptive and smooth user interfaces often involves measuring and adjusting the layout of your app’s views.
Currently, you use the onLayout event to get information about a view’s size and position, and then adjust the layout as needed. However, this can lead to issues because changes made in the onLayout callback might not be applied immediately. This can result in users seeing visual jumps or intermediate states as the layout updates.
With the new React Native Fabric architecture, this problem is solved. It allows for instant access to layout information and ensures that updates are applied correctly and quickly. This means users won’t see any visual glitches or jumps while the app adjusts, leading to a smoother and more polished experience.
- Enhanced Support for Concurrent Rendering
React Native Fabric enhances cross-platform app development by integrating new features from React 18 and beyond, making it easier to build high-quality apps for both web and mobile.
Here’s how it helps:
Concurrent Rendering: The new system supports features like Suspense and Transitions, allowing smoother and more efficient updates. For instance, Suspense helps manage data loading more effectively, and Transitions lets you prioritize important updates so that the app remains responsive and doesn’t lag.
Automatic Batching: This feature reduces unnecessary re-renders, making your app run more efficiently. It combines multiple updates into a single batch, which improves performance and speeds up rendering.
Priority Updates: You can now mark certain updates as lower priority. This means React can handle critical updates first, ensuring the app remains fast and responsive even during complex operations.
- Quick Communication Between JavaScript and Native Code
React Native Fabric boosts cross-platform app development by improving how JavaScript interacts with native code through a new system called JavaScript Interface (JSI).
The new JSI system replaces the old asynchronous bridge between JavaScript and native code. Instead of converting data back and forth, JSI lets JavaScript and native code directly reference each other. This means you can call functions and handle data more quickly without the extra time and overhead of data conversion.
For tasks that involve processing large amounts of data, like real-time camera frame processing, JSI is much faster. It can manage data more efficiently than the old system, which had to serialize and deserialize data, slowing things down. For example, VisionCamera can now handle high-resolution video frames smoothly.
By removing the need for constant data conversion, JSI helps make interactions between JavaScript and native components faster and more efficient. This includes tasks like initializing and updating core components such as View and Text.
Overall, JSI in React Native Fabric enhances performance and efficiency, leading to a smoother and more responsive app experience across both Android and iOS.
Key Improvements in Cross-Platform Development with React Native Fabric
The new fabric architecture brings several improvements in code quality, performance, and flexibility:
- Type safety: The system generates code to ensure that data types match up correctly between JavaScript and the host platform. It uses the JavaScript code as a guide to create C++ structures for handling the data. If there’s a mismatch between the data expected by JavaScript and the host platform, it will cause a build error, preventing issues before they happen.
- Shared C++ core: The core renderer is written in C++ and shared across platforms, making it easier to use React Native on new systems.
- Better platform compatibility: The new system makes it easier to combine React Native with other parts of the host platform. This is because it handles layout calculations more smoothly and safely, allowing for better and simpler integration with frameworks that need immediate updates.
- Improved Performance: The React Native in cross-platform renderer system boosts performance across all platforms. Features that were initially designed to solve performance issues on one platform, like view flattening for Android, are now available by default on both Android and iOS, making apps faster and more efficient on both.
- Consistency: Since the system is cross-platform, it’s easier to maintain a consistent experience across different devices.
- Faster startup: Host components are only loaded when needed, speeding up app initialization.
- Less data conversion: It reduces the amount of data converted between JavaScript and the host platform, improving overall efficiency.
Real-life Examples using React Native Fabric for cross-platform apps
As the creators of React Native, Meta uses it extensively across their products, including Facebook and Instagram. They are also driving the adoption of React Native Fabric for improved performance.
- Shopify
Shopify has been a strong advocate of React Native, using it to build cross-platform mobile applications for their merchants and customers. They contribute to the React Native ecosystem and are likely adopting Fabric to optimize their app performance.
- Microsoft
Microsoft has been using React Native for its Office 365 apps and Skype, leveraging it for a consistent experience across platforms. With their heavy focus on performance, they are adopting React Native’s latest features, including Fabric.
- Discord
Discord uses React Native for its cross-platform communication app, delivering real-time features efficiently. As they continually aim for performance improvements, React Native Fabric aligns well with their goals.
Pinterest uses React Native to build cross-platform features, improving development speed and UI consistency across Android and iOS. They are likely utilizing React Native Fabric to enhance user experience and performance.
- Uber Eats
Uber Eats has embraced React Native to deliver a unified app experience across platforms. With React Native Fabric, they can optimize performance and scale effectively.
Have you Incorporated React Native Fabric into your Workflow?
React Native Fabric architecture is a big step forward towards improving cross-platform app development services. Fabric is entirely about dividing the tasks into sync and async tasks which would be handled by the immutable shadow thread followed by the memory refinements. This architecture makes a lot of sense and can be truly helpful in creating mobile apps across platforms.
If you’re struggling with improving your app performance, get in touch with a professional React Native app development company. Doing so will help you get high-quality solutions and accelerate your business success.
