diff --git a/blog/2016/03/24/introducing-hot-reloading.html b/blog/2016/03/24/introducing-hot-reloading.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..fefd234ad2b --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/2016/03/24/introducing-hot-reloading.html @@ -0,0 +1,90 @@ +
React Native goal is to give you the best possible developer experience. A big part of it is the time it takes between you save a file and be able to see the changes. Our goal is to get this feedback loop to be under 1 second, even as your app grows.
We got close to this ideal via three main features:
At this point, the bottleneck for developers is no longer the time it takes to reload the app but losing the state of your app. A common scenario is to work on a feature that is multiple screens away from the launch screen. Every time you reload, you've got to click on the same path again and again to get back to your feature, making the cycle multiple-seconds long.
The idea behind hot reloading is to keep the app running and to inject new versions of the files that you edited at runtime. This way, you don't lose any of your state which is especially useful if you are tweaking the UI.
A video is worth a thousand words. Check out the difference between Live Reload (current) and Hot Reload (new).
+ +If you look closely, you can notice that it is possible to recover from a red box and you can also start importing modules that were not previously there without having to do a full reload.
Word of warning: because JavaScript is a very stateful language, hot reloading cannot be perfectly implemented. In practice, we found out that the current setup is working well for a large amount of usual use cases and a full reload is always available in case something gets messed up.
Hot reloading is available as of 0.22, you can enable it:
Now that we've seen why we want it and how to use it, the fun part begins: how does it actually works.
Hot Reloading is built on top of a feature Hot Module Replacement, or HMR. It was first introduced by Webpack and we implemented it inside of React Native Packager. HMR makes the Packager watch for file changes and send HMR updates to a thin HMR runtime included on the app.
In a nutshell, the HMR update contains the new code of the JS modules that changed. When the runtime receives them, it replaces the old modules' code with the new one:

The HMR update contains a bit more than just the module's code we want to change because replacing it, it's not enough for the runtime to pick up the changes. The problem is that the module system may have already cached the exports of the module we want to update. For instance, say you have an app composed by these two modules:
The module log, prints out the provided message including the current date provided by the module time.
When the app is bundled, React Native registers each module on the module system using the __d function. For this app, among many __d definitions, there will one for foo:
This invocation wraps each module's code into an anonymous function which we generally refer to as the factory function. The module system runtime keeps track of each module's factory function, whether it has already been executed, and the result of such execution (exports). When a module is required, the module system either provides the already cached exports or executes the module's factory function for the first time and saves the result.
So say you start your app and require log. At this point, neither log nor time's factory functions have been executed so no exports have been cached. Then, the user modifies time to return the date in MM/DD:
The Packager will send time's new code to the runtime (step 1), and when log gets eventually required the exported function gets executed it will do so with time's changes (step 2):

Now say the code of log requires time as a top level require:
When log is required, the runtime will cache its exports and time's one. (step 1). Then, when time is modified, the HMR process cannot simply finish after replacing time's code. If it did, when log gets executed, it would do so with a cached copy of time (old code).
For log to pick up time changes, we'll need to clear its cached exports because one of the modules it depends on was hot swapped (step 3). Finally, when log gets required again, its factory function will get executed requiring time and getting its new code.

HMR in React Native extends the module system by introducing the hot object. This API is based on Webpack's one. The hot object exposes a function called accept which allows you to define a callback that will be executed when the module needs to be hot swapped. For instance, if we would change time's code as follows, every time we save time, we'll see “time changed” in the console:
Note that only in rare cases you would need to use this API manually. Hot Reloading should work out of the box for the most common use cases.
As we've seen before, sometimes it's not enough only accepting the HMR update because a module that uses the one being hot swapped may have been already executed and its imports cached. For instance, suppose the dependency tree for the movies app example had a top-level MovieRouter that depended on the MovieSearch and MovieScreen views, which depended on the log and time modules from the previous examples:

If the user access the movies' search view but not the other one, all the modules but MovieScreen would have cached exports. If a change is made to module time, the runtime will have to clear the exports of log for it to pick up time's changes. The process wouldn't finish there: the runtime will repeat this process recursively up until all the parents have been accepted. So, it'll grab the modules that depend on log and try to accept them. For MovieScreen it can bail, as it hasn't been required yet. For MovieSearch, it will have to clear its exports and process its parents recursively. Finally, it will do the same thing for MovieRouter and finish there as no modules depends on it.
In order to walk the dependency tree, the runtime receives the inverse dependency tree from the Packager on the HMR update. For this example the runtime will receive a JSON object like this one:
React components are a bit harder to get to work with Hot Reloading. The problem is that we can't simply replace the old code with the new one as we'd loose the component's state. For React web applications, Dan Abramov implemented a babel transform that uses Webpack's HMR API to solve this issue. In a nutshell, his solution works by creating a proxy for every single React component on transform time. The proxies hold the component's state and delegate the lifecycle methods to the actual components, which are the ones we hot reload:

Besides creating the proxy component, the transform also defines the accept function with a piece of code to force React to re-render the component. This way, we can hot reload rendering code without losing any of the app's state.
The default transformer that comes with React Native uses the babel-preset-react-native, which is configured to use react-transform the same way you'd use it on a React web project that uses Webpack.
To enable Hot Reloading on Redux stores you will just need to use the HMR API similarly to what you'd do on a web project that uses Webpack:
When you change a reducer, the code to accept that reducer will be sent to the client. Then the client will realize that the reducer doesn't know how to accept itself, so it will look for all the modules that refer it and try to accept them. Eventually, the flow will get to the single store, the configureStore module, which will accept the HMR update.
If you are interested in helping making hot reloading better, I encourage you to read Dan Abramov's post around the future of hot reloading and to contribute. For example, Johny Days is going to make it work with multiple connected clients. We're relying on you all to maintain and improve this feature.
With React Native, we have the opportunity to rethink the way we build apps in order to make it a great developer experience. Hot reloading is only one piece of the puzzle, what other crazy hacks can we do to make it better?
React Native goal is to give you the best possible developer experience. A big part of it is the time it takes between you save a file and be able to see the changes. Our goal is to get this feedback loop to be under 1 second, even as your app grows.
We got close to this ideal via three main features:
At this point, the bottleneck for developers is no longer the time it takes to reload the app but losing the state of your app. A common scenario is to work on a feature that is multiple screens away from the launch screen. Every time you reload, you've got to click on the same path again and again to get back to your feature, making the cycle multiple-seconds long.
The idea behind hot reloading is to keep the app running and to inject new versions of the files that you edited at runtime. This way, you don't lose any of your state which is especially useful if you are tweaking the UI.
A video is worth a thousand words. Check out the difference between Live Reload (current) and Hot Reload (new).
+ +If you look closely, you can notice that it is possible to recover from a red box and you can also start importing modules that were not previously there without having to do a full reload.
Word of warning: because JavaScript is a very stateful language, hot reloading cannot be perfectly implemented. In practice, we found out that the current setup is working well for a large amount of usual use cases and a full reload is always available in case something gets messed up.
Hot reloading is available as of 0.22, you can enable it:
Now that we've seen why we want it and how to use it, the fun part begins: how does it actually works.
Hot Reloading is built on top of a feature Hot Module Replacement, or HMR. It was first introduced by Webpack and we implemented it inside of React Native Packager. HMR makes the Packager watch for file changes and send HMR updates to a thin HMR runtime included on the app.
In a nutshell, the HMR update contains the new code of the JS modules that changed. When the runtime receives them, it replaces the old modules' code with the new one:

The HMR update contains a bit more than just the module's code we want to change because replacing it, it's not enough for the runtime to pick up the changes. The problem is that the module system may have already cached the exports of the module we want to update. For instance, say you have an app composed by these two modules:
The module log, prints out the provided message including the current date provided by the module time.
When the app is bundled, React Native registers each module on the module system using the __d function. For this app, among many __d definitions, there will one for foo:
This invocation wraps each module's code into an anonymous function which we generally refer to as the factory function. The module system runtime keeps track of each module's factory function, whether it has already been executed, and the result of such execution (exports). When a module is required, the module system either provides the already cached exports or executes the module's factory function for the first time and saves the result.
So say you start your app and require log. At this point, neither log nor time's factory functions have been executed so no exports have been cached. Then, the user modifies time to return the date in MM/DD:
The Packager will send time's new code to the runtime (step 1), and when log gets eventually required the exported function gets executed it will do so with time's changes (step 2):

Now say the code of log requires time as a top level require:
When log is required, the runtime will cache its exports and time's one. (step 1). Then, when time is modified, the HMR process cannot simply finish after replacing time's code. If it did, when log gets executed, it would do so with a cached copy of time (old code).
For log to pick up time changes, we'll need to clear its cached exports because one of the modules it depends on was hot swapped (step 3). Finally, when log gets required again, its factory function will get executed requiring time and getting its new code.

HMR in React Native extends the module system by introducing the hot object. This API is based on Webpack's one. The hot object exposes a function called accept which allows you to define a callback that will be executed when the module needs to be hot swapped. For instance, if we would change time's code as follows, every time we save time, we'll see “time changed” in the console:
Note that only in rare cases you would need to use this API manually. Hot Reloading should work out of the box for the most common use cases.
As we've seen before, sometimes it's not enough only accepting the HMR update because a module that uses the one being hot swapped may have been already executed and its imports cached. For instance, suppose the dependency tree for the movies app example had a top-level MovieRouter that depended on the MovieSearch and MovieScreen views, which depended on the log and time modules from the previous examples:

If the user access the movies' search view but not the other one, all the modules but MovieScreen would have cached exports. If a change is made to module time, the runtime will have to clear the exports of log for it to pick up time's changes. The process wouldn't finish there: the runtime will repeat this process recursively up until all the parents have been accepted. So, it'll grab the modules that depend on log and try to accept them. For MovieScreen it can bail, as it hasn't been required yet. For MovieSearch, it will have to clear its exports and process its parents recursively. Finally, it will do the same thing for MovieRouter and finish there as no modules depends on it.
In order to walk the dependency tree, the runtime receives the inverse dependency tree from the Packager on the HMR update. For this example the runtime will receive a JSON object like this one:
React components are a bit harder to get to work with Hot Reloading. The problem is that we can't simply replace the old code with the new one as we'd loose the component's state. For React web applications, Dan Abramov implemented a babel transform that uses Webpack's HMR API to solve this issue. In a nutshell, his solution works by creating a proxy for every single React component on transform time. The proxies hold the component's state and delegate the lifecycle methods to the actual components, which are the ones we hot reload:

Besides creating the proxy component, the transform also defines the accept function with a piece of code to force React to re-render the component. This way, we can hot reload rendering code without losing any of the app's state.
The default transformer that comes with React Native uses the babel-preset-react-native, which is configured to use react-transform the same way you'd use it on a React web project that uses Webpack.
To enable Hot Reloading on Redux stores you will just need to use the HMR API similarly to what you'd do on a web project that uses Webpack:
When you change a reducer, the code to accept that reducer will be sent to the client. Then the client will realize that the reducer doesn't know how to accept itself, so it will look for all the modules that refer it and try to accept them. Eventually, the flow will get to the single store, the configureStore module, which will accept the HMR update.
If you are interested in helping making hot reloading better, I encourage you to read Dan Abramov's post around the future of hot reloading and to contribute. For example, Johny Days is going to make it work with multiple connected clients. We're relying on you all to maintain and improve this feature.
With React Native, we have the opportunity to rethink the way we build apps in order to make it a great developer experience. Hot reloading is only one piece of the puzzle, what other crazy hacks can we do to make it better?
Accessibility # | Edit on GitHub |
Both iOS and Android provide APIs for making apps accessible to people with disabilities. In addition, both platforms provide bundled assistive technologies, like the screen readers VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android) for the visually impaired. Similarly, in React Native we have included APIs designed to provide developers with support for making apps more accessible. Take note, iOS and Android differ slightly in their approaches, and thus the React Native implementations may vary by platform.
When true, indicates that the view is an accessibility element. When a view is an accessibility element, it groups its children into a single selectable component. By default, all touchable elements are accessible.
On Android, ‘accessible={true}’ property for a react-native View will be translated into native ‘focusable={true}’.
Accessibility # | Edit on GitHub |
Both iOS and Android provide APIs for making apps accessible to people with disabilities. In addition, both platforms provide bundled assistive technologies, like the screen readers VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android) for the visually impaired. Similarly, in React Native we have included APIs designed to provide developers with support for making apps more accessible. Take note, iOS and Android differ slightly in their approaches, and thus the React Native implementations may vary by platform.
When true, indicates that the view is an accessibility element. When a view is an accessibility element, it groups its children into a single selectable component. By default, all touchable elements are accessible.
On Android, ‘accessible={true}’ property for a react-native View will be translated into native ‘focusable={true}’.
In the above example, we can't get accessibility focus separately on 'text one' and 'text two'. Instead we get focus on a parent view with 'accessible' property.
When a view is marked as accessible, it is a good practice to set an accessibilityLabel on the view, so that people who use VoiceOver know what element they have selected. VoiceOver will read this string when a user selects the associated element.
To use, set the accessibilityLabel property to a custom string on your View:
ActionSheetIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
Display the iOS share sheet. The options object should contain
+
ActionSheetIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
Display the iOS share sheet. The options object should contain
one or both of:
message (string) - a message to shareurl (string) - a URL to shareNOTE: if url points to a local file, or is a base64-encoded
uri, the file it points to will be loaded and shared directly.
In this way, you can share images, videos, PDF files, etc.
Examples # | Edit on GitHub |
ActivityIndicatorIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
Whether to show the indicator (true, the default) or hide it (false).
The foreground color of the spinner (default is gray).
Whether the indicator should hide when not animating (true by default).
Invoked on mount and layout changes with
{nativeEvent: { layout: {x, y, width, height}}}.
Size of the indicator. Small has a height of 20, large has a height of 36.
Examples # | Edit on GitHub |
ActivityIndicatorIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
Whether to show the indicator (true, the default) or hide it (false).
The foreground color of the spinner (default is gray).
Whether the indicator should hide when not animating (true by default).
Invoked on mount and layout changes with
{nativeEvent: { layout: {x, y, width, height}}}.
Size of the indicator. Small has a height of 20, large has a height of 36.
Examples # | Edit on GitHub |
Alert # | Edit on GitHub |
Launches an alert dialog with the specified title and message.
Optionally provide a list of buttons. Tapping any button will fire the +
Alert # | Edit on GitHub |
Launches an alert dialog with the specified title and message.
Optionally provide a list of buttons. Tapping any button will fire the respective onPress callback and dismiss the alert. By default, the only button will be an 'OK' button.
This is an API that works both on iOS and Android and can show static alerts. To show an alert that prompts the user to enter some information, diff --git a/releases/next/docs/alertios.html b/releases/next/docs/alertios.html index cf98d955a34..7906925b4de 100644 --- a/releases/next/docs/alertios.html +++ b/releases/next/docs/alertios.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -
AlertIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
The AlertsIOS utility provides two functions: alert and prompt. All
+
AlertIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
The AlertsIOS utility provides two functions: alert and prompt. All
functionality available through AlertIOS.alert is also available in the
cross-platform Alert.alert, which we recommend you use if you don't need
iOS-specific functionality.
AlertIOS.prompt allows you to prompt the user for input inside of an
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/android-building-from-source.html b/releases/next/docs/android-building-from-source.html
index f5fe3d9691b..2aac3283027 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/android-building-from-source.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/android-building-from-source.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-
Building React Native from source # | Edit on GitHub |
You will need to build React Native from source if you want to work on a new feature/bug fix, try out the latest features which are not released yet, or maintain your own fork with patches that cannot be merged to the core.
Assuming you have the Android SDK installed, run android to open the Android SDK Manager.
Make sure you have the following installed:
build.gradle)build.gradle)Point Gradle to your Android SDK: either have $ANDROID_SDK and $ANDROID_NDK defined, or create a local.properties file in the root of your react-native checkout with the following contents:
Building React Native from source # | Edit on GitHub |
You will need to build React Native from source if you want to work on a new feature/bug fix, try out the latest features which are not released yet, or maintain your own fork with patches that cannot be merged to the core.
Assuming you have the Android SDK installed, run android to open the Android SDK Manager.
Make sure you have the following installed:
build.gradle)build.gradle)Point Gradle to your Android SDK: either have $ANDROID_SDK and $ANDROID_NDK defined, or create a local.properties file in the root of your react-native checkout with the following contents:
Example:
First, you need to install react-native from your fork. For example, to install the master branch from the official repo, run the following:
Alternatively, you can clone the repo to your node_modules directory and run npm install inside the cloned repo.
Add gradle-download-task as dependency in android/build.gradle:
Android Setup # | Edit on GitHub |
This guide describes basic steps of the Android development environment setup that are required to run React Native android apps on an android emulator.
On Mac, if you have installed XCode, Git is already installed, otherwise run the following:
On Linux, install Git via your package manager.
On Windows, download and install Git for Windows. During the setup process, choose "Run Git from Windows Command Prompt", which will add Git to your PATH environment variable.
brew install android-sdkIMPORTANT: Make sure the ANDROID_HOME environment variable points to your existing Android SDK:
On Mac, add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile or whatever your shell uses:
Android Setup # | Edit on GitHub |
This guide describes basic steps of the Android development environment setup that are required to run React Native android apps on an android emulator.
On Mac, if you have installed XCode, Git is already installed, otherwise run the following:
On Linux, install Git via your package manager.
On Windows, download and install Git for Windows. During the setup process, choose "Run Git from Windows Command Prompt", which will add Git to your PATH environment variable.
brew install android-sdkIMPORTANT: Make sure the ANDROID_HOME environment variable points to your existing Android SDK:
On Mac, add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile or whatever your shell uses:
On Linux, add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile or whatever your shell uses:
On Windows, go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Change settings -> Advanced -> Environment variables -> New
NOTE: You need to restart the Command Prompt (Windows) / Terminal Emulator (Mac OS X, Linux) to apply the new Environment variables.
React Native Android use gradle as a build system. We recommend to enable gradle daemon functionality which may result in up to 50% improvement in incremental build times for changes in java code. Learn here how to enable it for your platform.
android); in the window that appears make sure you check:

Genymotion is much easier to set up than stock Google emulators. However, it's only free for personal use. If you want to use the stock Google emulator, see below.
android; in the window that appears make sure you check:/usr/local/opt/android-sdk/extras/intel/Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager/IntelHAXM_<version>.dmg and installing the package within.android avd and click on Create...

Start...The Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a free android emulator that is hardware accelerated via Hyper-V. It doesn't require you to install Visual Studio at all.
To use it with react-native you just have to add a key and value to your registry:
regedit.exeHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Android SDK ToolsAndroid SDK Tools and choose New > String ValuePathPath Key and set the value to C:\Program Files\Android\sdk. The path value might be different on your machine.You will also need to run the command adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081 with this emulator.
Then restart the emulator and when it runs you can just do react-native run-android as usual.
You can use any editor to edit JavaScript. If you want to use Android Studio to work on native code, from the Welcome screen of Android Studio choose "Import project" and select the android folder of your app.
In case you encounter
try downgrading your Gradle version to 1.2.3 in <project-name>/android/build.gradle (https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/2720)
Profiling Android UI Performance # | Edit on GitHub |
We try our best to deliver buttery-smooth UI performance by default, but sometimes that just isn't possible. Remember, Android supports 10k+ different phones and is generalized to support software rendering: the framework architecture and need to generalize across many hardware targets unfortunately means you get less for free relative to iOS. But sometimes, there are things you can improve (and many times it's not native code's fault at all!).
The first step for debugging this jank is to answer the fundamental question of where your time is being spent during each 16ms frame. For that, we'll be using a standard Android profiling tool called systrace. But first...
Make sure that JS dev mode is OFF!
You should see
__DEV__ === false, development-level warning are OFF, performance optimizations are ONin your application logs (which you can view usingadb logcat)
Systrace is a standard Android marker-based profiling tool (and is installed when you install the Android platform-tools package). Profiled code blocks are surrounded by markers start/end markers which are then visualized in a colorful chart format. Both the Android SDK and React Native framework provide standard markers that you can visualize.
NOTE:
Systrace support was added in react-native
v0.15. You will need to build with that version to collect a trace.
First, connect a device that exhibits the stuttering you want to investigate to your computer via USB and get it to the point right before the navigation/animation you want to profile. Run systrace as follows
A quick breakdown of this command:
time is the length of time the trace will be collected in secondssched, gfx, and view are the android SDK tags (collections of markers) we care about: sched gives you information about what's running on each core of your phone, gfx gives you graphics info such as frame boundaries, and view gives you information about measure, layout, and draw passes-a <your_package_name> enables app-specific markers, specifically the ones built into the React Native framework. your_package_name can be found in the AndroidManifest.xml of your app and looks like com.example.appOnce the trace starts collecting, perform the animation or interaction you care about. At the end of the trace, systrace will give you a link to the trace which you can open in your browser.
After opening the trace in your browser (preferably Chrome), you should see something like this:

HINT: Use the WASD keys to strafe and zoom
The first thing you should do is highlight the 16ms frame boundaries if you haven't already done that. Check this checkbox at the top right of the screen:

You should see zebra stripes as in the screenshot above. If you don't, try profiling on a different device: Samsung has been known to have issues displaying vsyncs while the Nexus series is generally pretty reliable.
Scroll until you see (part of) the name of your package. In this case, I was profiling com.facebook.adsmanager, which shows up as book.adsmanager because of silly thread name limits in the kernel.
On the left side, you'll see a set of threads which correspond to the timeline rows on the right. There are three/four threads we care about for our purposes: the UI thread (which has your package name or the name UI Thread), mqt_js and mqt_native_modules. If you're running on Android 5+, we also care about the Render Thread.
This is where standard android measure/layout/draw happens. The thread name on the right will be your package name (in my case book.adsmanager) or UI Thread. The events that you see on this thread should look something like this and have to do with Choreographer, traversals, and DispatchUI:

This is where JS is executed. The thread name will be either mqt_js or <...> depending on how cooperative the kernel on your device is being. To identify it if it doesn't have a name, look for things like JSCall, Bridge.executeJSCall, etc:

This is where native module calls (e.g. the UIManager) are executed. The thread name will be either mqt_native_modules or <...>. To identify it in the latter case, look for things like NativeCall, callJavaModuleMethod, and onBatchComplete:

If you're using Android L (5.0) and up, you will also have a render thread in your application. This thread generates the actual OpenGL commands used to draw your UI. The thread name will be either RenderThread or <...>. To identify it in the latter case, look for things like DrawFrame and queueBuffer:

A smooth animation should look something like the following:

Each change in color is a frame -- remember that in order to display a frame, all our UI work needs to be done by the end of that 16ms period. Notice that no thread is working close to the frame boundary. An application rendering like this is rendering at 60FPS.
If you noticed chop, however, you might see something like this:

Notice that the JS thread is executing basically all the time, and across frame boundaries! This app is not rendering at 60FPS. In this case, the problem lies in JS.
You might also see something like this:

In this case, the UI and render threads are the ones that have work crossing frame boundaries. The UI that we're trying to render on each frame is requiring too much work to be done. In this case, the problem lies in the native views being rendered.
At this point, you'll have some very helpful information to inform your next steps.
If you identified a JS problem, look for clues in the specific JS that you're executing. In the scenario above, we see RCTEventEmitter being called multiple times per frame. Here's a zoom-in of the JS thread from the trace above:

This doesn't seem right. Why is it being called so often? Are they actually different events? The answers to these questions will probably depend on your product code. And many times, you'll want to look into shouldComponentUpdate.
TODO: Add more tools for profiling JS
If you identified a native UI problem, there are usually two scenarios:
In the first scenario, you'll see a trace that has the UI thread and/or Render Thread looking like this:

Notice the long amount of time spent in DrawFrame that crosses frame boundaries. This is time spent waiting for the GPU to drain its command buffer from the previous frame.
To mitigate this, you should:
renderToHardwareTextureAndroid for complex, static content that is being animated/transformed (e.g. the Navigator slide/alpha animations)needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing, which is disabled by default, as it greatly increases the per-frame load on the GPU in most cases.If these don't help and you want to dig deeper into what the GPU is actually doing, you can check out Tracer for OpenGL ES.
In the second scenario, you'll see something more like this:

Notice that first the JS thread thinks for a bit, then you see some work done on the native modules thread, followed by an expensive traversal on the UI thread.
There isn't an easy way to mitigate this unless you're able to postpone creating new UI until after the interaction, or you are able to simplify the UI you're creating. The react native team is working on a infrastructure level solution for this that will allow new UI to be created and configured off the main thread, allowing the interaction to continue smoothly.
If you are confused or stuck, please post ask on Stack Overflow with the react-native tag. If you are unable to get a response there, or find an issue with a core component, please File a Github issue.
Profiling Android UI Performance # | Edit on GitHub |
We try our best to deliver buttery-smooth UI performance by default, but sometimes that just isn't possible. Remember, Android supports 10k+ different phones and is generalized to support software rendering: the framework architecture and need to generalize across many hardware targets unfortunately means you get less for free relative to iOS. But sometimes, there are things you can improve (and many times it's not native code's fault at all!).
The first step for debugging this jank is to answer the fundamental question of where your time is being spent during each 16ms frame. For that, we'll be using a standard Android profiling tool called systrace. But first...
Make sure that JS dev mode is OFF!
You should see
__DEV__ === false, development-level warning are OFF, performance optimizations are ONin your application logs (which you can view usingadb logcat)
Systrace is a standard Android marker-based profiling tool (and is installed when you install the Android platform-tools package). Profiled code blocks are surrounded by markers start/end markers which are then visualized in a colorful chart format. Both the Android SDK and React Native framework provide standard markers that you can visualize.
NOTE:
Systrace support was added in react-native
v0.15. You will need to build with that version to collect a trace.
First, connect a device that exhibits the stuttering you want to investigate to your computer via USB and get it to the point right before the navigation/animation you want to profile. Run systrace as follows
A quick breakdown of this command:
time is the length of time the trace will be collected in secondssched, gfx, and view are the android SDK tags (collections of markers) we care about: sched gives you information about what's running on each core of your phone, gfx gives you graphics info such as frame boundaries, and view gives you information about measure, layout, and draw passes-a <your_package_name> enables app-specific markers, specifically the ones built into the React Native framework. your_package_name can be found in the AndroidManifest.xml of your app and looks like com.example.appOnce the trace starts collecting, perform the animation or interaction you care about. At the end of the trace, systrace will give you a link to the trace which you can open in your browser.
After opening the trace in your browser (preferably Chrome), you should see something like this:

HINT: Use the WASD keys to strafe and zoom
The first thing you should do is highlight the 16ms frame boundaries if you haven't already done that. Check this checkbox at the top right of the screen:

You should see zebra stripes as in the screenshot above. If you don't, try profiling on a different device: Samsung has been known to have issues displaying vsyncs while the Nexus series is generally pretty reliable.
Scroll until you see (part of) the name of your package. In this case, I was profiling com.facebook.adsmanager, which shows up as book.adsmanager because of silly thread name limits in the kernel.
On the left side, you'll see a set of threads which correspond to the timeline rows on the right. There are three/four threads we care about for our purposes: the UI thread (which has your package name or the name UI Thread), mqt_js and mqt_native_modules. If you're running on Android 5+, we also care about the Render Thread.
This is where standard android measure/layout/draw happens. The thread name on the right will be your package name (in my case book.adsmanager) or UI Thread. The events that you see on this thread should look something like this and have to do with Choreographer, traversals, and DispatchUI:

This is where JS is executed. The thread name will be either mqt_js or <...> depending on how cooperative the kernel on your device is being. To identify it if it doesn't have a name, look for things like JSCall, Bridge.executeJSCall, etc:

This is where native module calls (e.g. the UIManager) are executed. The thread name will be either mqt_native_modules or <...>. To identify it in the latter case, look for things like NativeCall, callJavaModuleMethod, and onBatchComplete:

If you're using Android L (5.0) and up, you will also have a render thread in your application. This thread generates the actual OpenGL commands used to draw your UI. The thread name will be either RenderThread or <...>. To identify it in the latter case, look for things like DrawFrame and queueBuffer:

A smooth animation should look something like the following:

Each change in color is a frame -- remember that in order to display a frame, all our UI work needs to be done by the end of that 16ms period. Notice that no thread is working close to the frame boundary. An application rendering like this is rendering at 60FPS.
If you noticed chop, however, you might see something like this:

Notice that the JS thread is executing basically all the time, and across frame boundaries! This app is not rendering at 60FPS. In this case, the problem lies in JS.
You might also see something like this:

In this case, the UI and render threads are the ones that have work crossing frame boundaries. The UI that we're trying to render on each frame is requiring too much work to be done. In this case, the problem lies in the native views being rendered.
At this point, you'll have some very helpful information to inform your next steps.
If you identified a JS problem, look for clues in the specific JS that you're executing. In the scenario above, we see RCTEventEmitter being called multiple times per frame. Here's a zoom-in of the JS thread from the trace above:

This doesn't seem right. Why is it being called so often? Are they actually different events? The answers to these questions will probably depend on your product code. And many times, you'll want to look into shouldComponentUpdate.
TODO: Add more tools for profiling JS
If you identified a native UI problem, there are usually two scenarios:
In the first scenario, you'll see a trace that has the UI thread and/or Render Thread looking like this:

Notice the long amount of time spent in DrawFrame that crosses frame boundaries. This is time spent waiting for the GPU to drain its command buffer from the previous frame.
To mitigate this, you should:
renderToHardwareTextureAndroid for complex, static content that is being animated/transformed (e.g. the Navigator slide/alpha animations)needsOffscreenAlphaCompositing, which is disabled by default, as it greatly increases the per-frame load on the GPU in most cases.If these don't help and you want to dig deeper into what the GPU is actually doing, you can check out Tracer for OpenGL ES.
In the second scenario, you'll see something more like this:

Notice that first the JS thread thinks for a bit, then you see some work done on the native modules thread, followed by an expensive traversal on the UI thread.
There isn't an easy way to mitigate this unless you're able to postpone creating new UI until after the interaction, or you are able to simplify the UI you're creating. The react native team is working on a infrastructure level solution for this that will allow new UI to be created and configured off the main thread, allowing the interaction to continue smoothly.
If you are confused or stuck, please post ask on Stack Overflow with the react-native tag. If you are unable to get a response there, or find an issue with a core component, please File a Github issue.
Animated # | Edit on GitHub |
Animations are an important part of modern UX, and the Animated
+
Animated # | Edit on GitHub |
Animations are an important part of modern UX, and the Animated
library is designed to make them fluid, powerful, and easy to build and
maintain.
The simplest workflow is to create an Animated.Value, hook it up to one or
more style attributes of an animated component, and then drive updates either
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/animations.html b/releases/next/docs/animations.html
index 3a5bed11cf7..b63752738bc 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/animations.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/animations.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-
Animations # | Edit on GitHub |
Fluid, meaningful animations are essential to the mobile user experience. Like +
Animations # | Edit on GitHub |
Fluid, meaningful animations are essential to the mobile user experience. Like
everything in React Native, Animation APIs for React Native are currently under
development, but have started to coalesce around two complementary systems:
LayoutAnimation for animated global layout transactions, and Animated for
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/appregistry.html b/releases/next/docs/appregistry.html
index 4c34a702b02..5d88480679f 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/appregistry.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/appregistry.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-
AppRegistry # | Edit on GitHub |
AppRegistry is the JS entry point to running all React Native apps. App
+
AppRegistry # | Edit on GitHub |
AppRegistry is the JS entry point to running all React Native apps. App
root components should register themselves with
AppRegistry.registerComponent, then the native system can load the bundle
for the app and then actually run the app when it's ready by invoking
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/appstate.html b/releases/next/docs/appstate.html
index 26fea330d75..af7aae678e9 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/appstate.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/appstate.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-
AppState # | Edit on GitHub |
AppState can tell you if the app is in the foreground or background,
+
AppState # | Edit on GitHub |
AppState can tell you if the app is in the foreground or background,
and notify you when the state changes.
AppState is frequently used to determine the intent and proper behavior when handling push notifications.
active - The app is running in the foregroundbackground - The app is running in the background. The user is either
in another app or on the home screeninactive - This is a transition state that currently never happens for
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/appstateios.html b/releases/next/docs/appstateios.html
index f8f92b7cb71..67539038c22 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/appstateios.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/appstateios.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-AppStateIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
AppStateIOS can tell you if the app is in the foreground or background,
+
AppStateIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
AppStateIOS can tell you if the app is in the foreground or background,
and notify you when the state changes.
AppStateIOS is frequently used to determine the intent and proper behavior when handling push notifications.
active - The app is running in the foregroundbackground - The app is running in the background. The user is either
in another app or on the home screeninactive - This is a state that occurs when transitioning between
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/asyncstorage.html b/releases/next/docs/asyncstorage.html
index 570a2efba7f..08795b2dc86 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/asyncstorage.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/asyncstorage.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-AsyncStorage # | Edit on GitHub |
AsyncStorage is a simple, asynchronous, persistent, key-value storage +
AsyncStorage # | Edit on GitHub |
AsyncStorage is a simple, asynchronous, persistent, key-value storage system that is global to the app. It should be used instead of LocalStorage.
It is recommended that you use an abstraction on top of AsyncStorage instead of AsyncStorage directly for anything more than light usage since it operates globally.
This JS code is a simple facade over the native iOS implementation to provide diff --git a/releases/next/docs/backandroid.html b/releases/next/docs/backandroid.html index fa3427f6e01..ef6d2634114 100644 --- a/releases/next/docs/backandroid.html +++ b/releases/next/docs/backandroid.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -
BackAndroid # | Edit on GitHub |
Detect hardware back button presses, and programmatically invoke the default back button +
BackAndroid # | Edit on GitHub |
Detect hardware back button presses, and programmatically invoke the default back button functionality to exit the app if there are no listeners or if none of the listeners return true.
Example:
CameraRoll # | Edit on GitHub |
CameraRoll provides access to the local camera roll / gallery.
Saves the image to the camera roll / gallery.
On Android, the tag is a local URI, such as "file:///sdcard/img.png".
On iOS, the tag can be one of the following:
CameraRoll # | Edit on GitHub |
CameraRoll provides access to the local camera roll / gallery.
Saves the image to the camera roll / gallery.
On Android, the tag is a local URI, such as "file:///sdcard/img.png".
On iOS, the tag can be one of the following:
Returns a Promise which when resolved will be passed the new URI.
Returns a Promise with photo identifier objects from the local camera
roll of the device matching shape defined by getPhotosReturnChecker.
@param {object} params See getPhotosParamChecker.
Returns a Promise which when resolved will be of shape getPhotosReturnChecker.
Examples # | Edit on GitHub |
Clipboard # | Edit on GitHub |
Clipboard gives you an interface for setting and getting content from Clipboard on both iOS and Android
Get content of string type, this method returns a Promise, so you can use following code to get clipboard content
Clipboard # | Edit on GitHub |
Clipboard gives you an interface for setting and getting content from Clipboard on both iOS and Android
Get content of string type, this method returns a Promise, so you can use following code to get clipboard content
Set content of string type. You can use following code to set clipboard content
Colors # | Edit on GitHub |
The following formats are supported:
'#f0f' (#rgb)'#f0fc' (#rgba)'#ff00ff' (#rrggbb)'#ff00ff00' (#rrggbbaa)'rgb(255, 255, 255)''rgba(255, 255, 255, 1.0)''hsl(360, 100%, 100%)''hsla(360, 100%, 100%, 1.0)''transparent''red'0xff00ff00 (0xrrggbbaa)For the named colors, React Native follows the CSS3 specification:
Colors # | Edit on GitHub |
The following formats are supported:
'#f0f' (#rgb)'#f0fc' (#rgba)'#ff00ff' (#rrggbb)'#ff00ff00' (#rrggbbaa)'rgb(255, 255, 255)''rgba(255, 255, 255, 1.0)''hsl(360, 100%, 100%)''hsla(360, 100%, 100%, 1.0)''transparent''red'0xff00ff00 (0xrrggbbaa)For the named colors, React Native follows the CSS3 specification:
Communication between native and React Native # | Edit on GitHub |
In Integrating with Existing Apps guide and Native UI Components guide we learn how to embed React Native in a native component and vice versa. When we mix native and React Native components, we'll eventually find a need to communicate between these two worlds. Some ways to achieve that have been already mentioned in other guides. This article summarizes available techniques.
React Native is inspired by React, so the basic idea of the information flow is similar. The flow in React is one-directional. We maintain a hierarchy of components, in which each component depends only on its parent and own internal state. We do this with properties: data is passed from a parent to its children in a top-down manner. If we have an ancestor component that rely on the state of its descendant, the recommended solution would be to pass down a callback that would be used by the descendant to update the ancestor.
The same concept applies to React Native. As long as we are building our application purely within the framework, we can drive our app with properties and callbacks. But, when we mix React Native and native components, we need some special, cross-language mechanisms that would allow us to pass information between them.
Properties are the simplest way of cross-component communication. So we need a way to pass properties both from native to React Native, and from React Native to native.
In order to embed a React Native view in a native component, we use RCTRootView. RCTRootView is a UIView that holds a React Native app. It also provides an interface between native side and the hosted app.
RCTRootView has an initializer that allows you to pass arbitrary properties down to the React Native app. The initialProperties parameter has to be an instance of NSDictionary. The dictionary is internally converted into a JSON object that the top-level JS component can reference.
Communication between native and React Native # | Edit on GitHub |
In Integrating with Existing Apps guide and Native UI Components guide we learn how to embed React Native in a native component and vice versa. When we mix native and React Native components, we'll eventually find a need to communicate between these two worlds. Some ways to achieve that have been already mentioned in other guides. This article summarizes available techniques.
React Native is inspired by React, so the basic idea of the information flow is similar. The flow in React is one-directional. We maintain a hierarchy of components, in which each component depends only on its parent and own internal state. We do this with properties: data is passed from a parent to its children in a top-down manner. If we have an ancestor component that rely on the state of its descendant, the recommended solution would be to pass down a callback that would be used by the descendant to update the ancestor.
The same concept applies to React Native. As long as we are building our application purely within the framework, we can drive our app with properties and callbacks. But, when we mix React Native and native components, we need some special, cross-language mechanisms that would allow us to pass information between them.
Properties are the simplest way of cross-component communication. So we need a way to pass properties both from native to React Native, and from React Native to native.
In order to embed a React Native view in a native component, we use RCTRootView. RCTRootView is a UIView that holds a React Native app. It also provides an interface between native side and the hosted app.
RCTRootView has an initializer that allows you to pass arbitrary properties down to the React Native app. The initialProperties parameter has to be an instance of NSDictionary. The dictionary is internally converted into a JSON object that the top-level JS component can reference.
DatePickerAndroid # | Edit on GitHub |
Opens the standard Android date picker dialog.
DatePickerAndroid # | Edit on GitHub |
Opens the standard Android date picker dialog.
DatePickerIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
Use DatePickerIOS to render a date/time picker (selector) on iOS. This is
+
DatePickerIOS # | Edit on GitHub |
Use DatePickerIOS to render a date/time picker (selector) on iOS. This is
a controlled component, so you must hook in to the onDateChange callback
and update the date prop in order for the component to update, otherwise
the user's change will be reverted immediately to reflect props.date as the
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/debugging.html b/releases/next/docs/debugging.html
index db86a564274..dbd18947de5 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/debugging.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/debugging.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-
Debugging # | Edit on GitHub |
To access the in-app developer menu:
control + ⌘ + z in the simulator.⌘ + m or F2 to simulate hardware menu button click). You can also install Frappé, a tool for OS X, which allows you to emulate shaking of devices remotely. You can use ⌘ + Shift + R as a shortcut to trigger a shake from Frappé.Hint
To disable the developer menu for production builds:
- For iOS open your project in Xcode and select
Product→Scheme→Edit Scheme...(or press⌘ + <). Next, selectRunfrom the menu on the left and change the Build Configuration toRelease.- For Android, by default, developer menu will be disabled in release builds done by gradle (e.g with gradle
assembleReleasetask). Although this behavior can be customized by passing proper value toReactInstanceManager#setUseDeveloperSupport.
Run adb logcat *:S ReactNative:V ReactNativeJS:V in a terminal to see your Android app's logs.
Selecting Reload (or pressing ⌘ + r in the iOS simulator) will reload the JavaScript that powers your application. If you have added new resources (such as an image to Images.xcassets on iOS or to res/drawable folder on Android) or modified any native code (Objective-C/Swift code on iOS or Java/C++ code on Android), you will need to re-build the app for the changes to take effect.
Using console.warn will display an on-screen log on a yellow background. Click on this warning to show more information about it full screen and/or dismiss the warning.
You can use console.error to display a full screen error on a red background.
These boxes only appear when you're running your app in dev mode.
To debug the JavaScript code in Chrome, select Debug in Chrome from the developer menu. This will open a new tab at http://localhost:8081/debugger-ui.
In Chrome, press ⌘ + option + i or select View → Developer → Developer Tools to toggle the developer tools console. Enable Pause On Caught Exceptions for a better debugging experience.
To debug on a real device:
RCTWebSocketExecutor.m and change localhost to the IP address of your computer. Shake the device to open the development menu with the option to start debugging.adb command line tool to setup port forwarding from the device to your computer. For that run: adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081 (see this link for help on adb command). Alternatively, you can open dev menu on the device and select Dev Settings, then update Debug server host for device setting to the IP address of your computer.This option allows for your JS changes to trigger automatic reload on the connected device/emulator. To enable this option:
Enable Live Reload via the developer menu to have the application automatically reload when changes are made to the JavaScript.Dev Settings and select Auto reload on JS change optionOn 0.5.0-rc and higher versions, you can enable a FPS graph overlay in the developers menu in order to help you debug performance problems.
Debugging # | Edit on GitHub |
To access the in-app developer menu:
control + ⌘ + z in the simulator.⌘ + m or F2 to simulate hardware menu button click). You can also install Frappé, a tool for OS X, which allows you to emulate shaking of devices remotely. You can use ⌘ + Shift + R as a shortcut to trigger a shake from Frappé.Hint
To disable the developer menu for production builds:
- For iOS open your project in Xcode and select
Product→Scheme→Edit Scheme...(or press⌘ + <). Next, selectRunfrom the menu on the left and change the Build Configuration toRelease.- For Android, by default, developer menu will be disabled in release builds done by gradle (e.g with gradle
assembleReleasetask). Although this behavior can be customized by passing proper value toReactInstanceManager#setUseDeveloperSupport.
Run adb logcat *:S ReactNative:V ReactNativeJS:V in a terminal to see your Android app's logs.
Selecting Reload (or pressing ⌘ + r in the iOS simulator) will reload the JavaScript that powers your application. If you have added new resources (such as an image to Images.xcassets on iOS or to res/drawable folder on Android) or modified any native code (Objective-C/Swift code on iOS or Java/C++ code on Android), you will need to re-build the app for the changes to take effect.
Using console.warn will display an on-screen log on a yellow background. Click on this warning to show more information about it full screen and/or dismiss the warning.
You can use console.error to display a full screen error on a red background.
These boxes only appear when you're running your app in dev mode.
To debug the JavaScript code in Chrome, select Debug in Chrome from the developer menu. This will open a new tab at http://localhost:8081/debugger-ui.
In Chrome, press ⌘ + option + i or select View → Developer → Developer Tools to toggle the developer tools console. Enable Pause On Caught Exceptions for a better debugging experience.
To debug on a real device:
RCTWebSocketExecutor.m and change localhost to the IP address of your computer. Shake the device to open the development menu with the option to start debugging.adb command line tool to setup port forwarding from the device to your computer. For that run: adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081 (see this link for help on adb command). Alternatively, you can open dev menu on the device and select Dev Settings, then update Debug server host for device setting to the IP address of your computer.This option allows for your JS changes to trigger automatic reload on the connected device/emulator. To enable this option:
Enable Live Reload via the developer menu to have the application automatically reload when changes are made to the JavaScript.Dev Settings and select Auto reload on JS change optionOn 0.5.0-rc and higher versions, you can enable a FPS graph overlay in the developers menu in order to help you debug performance problems.
Dimensions # | Edit on GitHub |
This should only be called from native code by sending the +
Dimensions # | Edit on GitHub |
This should only be called from native code by sending the didUpdateDimensions event.
@param {object} dims Simple string-keyed object of dimensions to set
Initial dimensions are set before runApplication is called so they should
be available before any other require's are run, but may be updated later.
Note: Although dimensions are available immediately, they may change (e.g due to device rotation) so any rendering logic or styles that depend on diff --git a/releases/next/docs/direct-manipulation.html b/releases/next/docs/direct-manipulation.html index b1c73eec326..3f4f4b0e3aa 100644 --- a/releases/next/docs/direct-manipulation.html +++ b/releases/next/docs/direct-manipulation.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -
Direct Manipulation # | Edit on GitHub |
It is sometimes necessary to make changes directly to a component +
Direct Manipulation # | Edit on GitHub |
It is sometimes necessary to make changes directly to a component without using state/props to trigger a re-render of the entire subtree. When using React in the browser for example, you sometimes need to directly modify a DOM node, and the same is true for views in mobile diff --git a/releases/next/docs/drawerlayoutandroid.html b/releases/next/docs/drawerlayoutandroid.html index 79d2db76c1e..b9eecd93c0f 100644 --- a/releases/next/docs/drawerlayoutandroid.html +++ b/releases/next/docs/drawerlayoutandroid.html @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -
DrawerLayoutAndroid # | Edit on GitHub |
React component that wraps the platform DrawerLayout (Android only). The
+
DrawerLayoutAndroid # | Edit on GitHub |
React component that wraps the platform DrawerLayout (Android only). The
Drawer (typically used for navigation) is rendered with renderNavigationView
and direct children are the main view (where your content goes). The navigation
view is initially not visible on the screen, but can be pulled in from the
diff --git a/releases/next/docs/embedded-app-android.html b/releases/next/docs/embedded-app-android.html
index 27643ab16e6..ad7a8b4b81d 100644
--- a/releases/next/docs/embedded-app-android.html
+++ b/releases/next/docs/embedded-app-android.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-
Integrating with Existing Apps # | Edit on GitHub |
Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easily embeddable within an existing non-React Native app.
In your app's build.gradle file add the React Native dependency:
You can find the latest version of the react-native library on Maven Central. Next, make sure you have the Internet permission in your AndroidManifest.xml:
This is only really used in dev mode when reloading JavaScript from the development server, so you can strip this in release builds if you need to.
You need to add some native code in order to start the React Native runtime and get it to render something. To do this, we're going to create an Activity that creates a ReactRootView, starts a React application inside it and sets it as the main content view.