Building Animated Slide Toggles in React Native

Understanding Animated Slide Toggles

A slide toggle represents a physical switch that allows users to turn things on or off. It is commonly used to switch between on/off states in preferences and settings or toggle Wi-Fi on a smartphone. Slide toggles are also effective for changing the state of system functionalities and preferences.

Getting Started with React Native

To begin, ensure you have Node.js and npm installed on your machine. Then, install Xcode or Android Studio, depending on your desired platform. You should also have knowledge of JavaScript and React, as well as experience with React Native and the Expo framework.

npx react-native init rn-slide-toggle

Core Concepts

To build an animated slide toggle, you need to understand the concept of translation. Translation involves moving an element from one position to another. In React Native, you can use the transform style property to translate a component.

Building a Basic Slide Toggle

To create a basic slide toggle, you can use the Switch component from React Native.

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Switch, View, Text } from 'react-native';

const BasicSlideToggle = () => {
  const [isWifiEnabled, setIsWifiEnabled] = useState(false);

  const wifiToggleSwitch = () => {
    setIsWifiEnabled(!isWifiEnabled);
  };

  return (
    <View>
      <Text>Wi-Fi</Text>
      <Switch value={isWifiEnabled} onValueChange={wifiToggleSwitch} />
    </View>
  );
};

Customizing the Slide Toggle

To customize the slide toggle, you can use third-party libraries like react-native-toggle-element. This library provides additional methods and properties for creating and customizing animated slide toggles.

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Toggle } from 'react-native-toggle-element';

const CustomSlideToggle = () => {
  const [toggleValue, setToggleValue] = useState(false);

  const onToggle = () => {
    setToggleValue(!toggleValue);
  };

  return (
    <Toggle
      value={toggleValue}
      onPress={onToggle}
      thumbActiveComponent=<Text>On</Text>
      thumbInActiveComponent=<Text>Off</Text>
      trackBar={{
        width: 200,
        height: 40,
        borderRadius: 20,
      }}
    />
  );
};