React Native Newsletter

See the list of commits that made it in by clicking through. A solid mixture of bug-fixes and new features, such as:

• ReactART iOS bindings now available (see "React ART iOS bindings now open source!" below)
• Multiline TextInput added (see UIExplorer)
• SegmentedControlIOS added (see UIExplorer)
• YellowBox for warnings commit
• onLayout callback to get updated layout information back in your JS after layout is performed (see UIExplorer and this commit)

These are just a few of the many additions, be sure to check out the compare view.

@ide shocked me today when he showed me this app he has been working on called Exponent. I believe this is a leap forward to reduce the barrier to entry for anyone who is interested in trying out React Native and actually running it on their device. Requiring a new user to install XCode and purchase a developer license in order to run their app on an actual device could be preventing a large number of potential users from experimenting with it, so I'm very excited to see where this goes.

All you need to do to try this is:

• Visit http://exp.host/ on your iOS 8+ device and install the app, go to your home screen and open it
• Follow the instructions in Get Started (make sure you have a recent version of node or preferably iojs installed)
• Write code and load it directly on your phone without XCode or a Developer License. Share with others using Exponent by providing them with the exp:// url to your app!

If you have any questions or want to chat about this, ping @ide on IRC - he is looking forward to your feedback! The Exponent app itself is currently closed source but will be open source soon.

@gabescholz of Brewhouse (creators of Goodbits, which I am using to create this newsletter) did a presentation in Vancouver at the VanJS meetup about React.js and its uses beyond the DOM. He revealed a quick and dirty implementation of React.js for Pebble that he put together as part of this presentation, you can find it on Github at garbles/react-pebble-demo and the slides explain a bit about the internals, in case you might be interested in picking up where he left off or making your own React.js for X.

Can one designer and one developer build an iOS app in a weekend? In @realasa's experience, the answer is yes, at least with React Native.

@jlongster of Firefox Developer Tools talks about why he thinks React Native is different from other technologies in the same space. If you're already very familiar with React and React Native, you might not learn a lot here - a great share for friends who aren't familiar with it yet though! Video and slides included.

It's just React all the way down.                                                  

Still trying to wrap your head around Flexbox? You might find this interactive tool for updating Flexbox properties and seeing the changes immediately to be useful.

If you are using the CameraRoll in your app and feeling some serious slowdowns, check out this issue for a temporary fix by @aroth until the issue is resolved in a new release!

React Native comes with a bunch out of the box, but it's easy to add your own, just take a look at NavigatorSceneConfigs.js for more info.

See this example project to get an idea of how you can use it today!

This appears to be inconsistent with the browser, but @vjeux points out that actually position: relative is the default in React Native, and if you were to apply this to the browser then the behaviour would be the same. Also in this issue: how to absolutely position a view on top of others - hint: make it the last child.

"The CSS align-content property aligns a flex container's lines within the flex container when there is extra space on the cross-axis." MDN.

Not ready for prime-time yet but it appears to have @vjeux's blessing, pending some fixes, so we may be seeing it land in an upcoming release!

Want to implement your own picker with multiple columns, similar to the DatePickerIOS module? Look no further, @veddermatic has the solution for you.

Dead simple localization for React Native                                                  

Charts look good. This library makes charts for React Native. You might like it.

Mapbox hardware-accelerated vector maps with customizable styles, beautiful and powerful! Check out Mapbox GL for more information about the underlying SDK.

@johanneslumpe once again provides with an incredibly useful module that wraps native APIs for reading from and writing to the filesystem.

Authenticate through the Coinbase iOS sdk using React Native. A work in progress, need to add support still for performing transfers.