Building a Cross-Platform Ecommerce App with React Native from Scratch
The world of ecommerce is booming, and with the increasing number of smartphone users, every product-selling company wants to provide a convenient purchasing service through a mobile app. As a mobile application developer, you might be interested in building an ecommerce mobile app that can be used by customers to buy products online.
The Anatomy of an Ecommerce App
An ecommerce app typically consists of several generic screens, including a products list, product details page, shopping cart, checkout area, and signup/login pages. Some apps may also have space for customer reviews, personal settings, and many other features. To reach a wide customer audience, the app needs to be released into both the Google Play and Apple App stores.
The Power of React Native
React Native is a popular framework for building cross-platform mobile apps, allowing developers to easily build native apps within a React-based development environment. Many freelance developers opt for open-source React Native ecommerce app templates and customize them according to their users’ requirements. However, these templates often use complex Redux for centralized state management, making it a wiser decision to create your own React Native ecommerce app template from scratch.
Our Ecommerce App Template
In this tutorial, we’ll build an ecommerce mobile app with several generic features. The app will have three screens:
- Products Screen: Lists down several products and serves as the homepage of the app. Each product item renders with a title, price, and image.
- Product Details Screen: Displays all information about the current product, with a button to add the product to the shopping cart.
- Shopping Cart Screen: Shows a summary of all products added to the shopping cart, including product name, quantity, subtotal, and total.
Getting Started with React Native
To build our ecommerce app, we’ll create a new React Native project using the Expo CLI. We’ll set up a new project, install the required packages, and create a mock API service to obtain product information.
Creating the Products List
We’ll create a reusable component for a single product item and build our products list screen by reusing the product component. We’ll also implement the shopping cart’s logic, using React’s Context API to store and update the shopping cart data.
Developing the Product Details Screen
The product details screen will display full information about the currently selected product, with an Add to Cart button that updates the shopping cart context.
Creating the Shopping Cart Summary Screen
The cart summary screen will list down all the shopping cart items with product name, quantity, subtotal, and final total.
Assembling All Components
Finally, we’ll assemble all components as an ecommerce mobile app, including a navigation controller and wrapping all components with the cart context provider.
Next Steps
This tutorial has guided you to build a cross-platform ecommerce app with React Native from scratch. You can now implement requirements such as authentication, customer reviews, product comments, stock availability checks, and more. You’ll also need to plan your mobile app’s backend, using an existing ecommerce API or building a new one.
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