Microsoft is adding Universal Windows Platform support to Facebook's React Native framework
Microsoft is adding Universal Windows Platform (UWP) support to React Native, the open-source development framework.
React Native is a JavaScript code library originally developed by Facebook for building user interfaces. Facebook open-sourced Reactive Native in 2015. The framework is meant to enable developers to write mobile native apps that can run on multiple platforms, including iOS and Android. However, React Native isn't a write-once/write-anywhere framework; instead it focuses on the distinct features unique to each platform.
Microsoft portrayed today's announcement as extending the reach of React Native apps to Windows 10 devices, including PCs, mobile devices, Xbox One and HoloLens.
"For Windows app developers, it also means an opportunity to embed React Native components into their existing UWP apps and to leverage the developer tools and programming paradigms that React Native offers," according to the April 13 blog post detailing the Microsoft-Facebook announcement from Facebook's F8 developer conference.
Microsoft also plans to provide open-source tools and services to help developers create React Native apps. There's already a React Native extension for Visual Studio Code, Microsoft's lightweight, cross platform Visual Studio Editor.
"Today's announcement and releases are just the beginning. This release provides initial platform support in a standalone GitHub repository. Moving forward, we will work to add additional capabilities and bring our implementation into alignment with the original project," Microsoft officials added.
Microsoft is using its Chakra engine as the JavaScript runtime in its UWP React Native implementation.