Building Responsive Layouts in React Native with Restyle
Getting Started with React Native and Restyle
To follow along with this tutorial, you’ll need to have React Native ≥ v0.63.0, Expo ≥ v41, TypeScript ≥ v4.1.0, and Node.js ≥ v16.13.1 installed. Let’s start by installing the Expo CLI globally and creating a new React Native project called ResponsiveProject.
What is Restyle?
Restyle is a library developed by Shopify that provides a type-enforced system for building UI components in React Native with TypeScript. It offers theming capabilities, such as light and dark modes, and works seamlessly with React Native’s default styling. With Restyle, you can create UI libraries in React Native that are highly customizable and responsive.
Setting Up Restyle
Setting up Restyle is straightforward. First, install the library into your project, ResponsiveProject. Then, create an src folder in your root directory and add a components folder to hold your index.ts and Theme.ts files. In the Theme.ts file, define your custom theme, specifying set values for spacing, colors, and breakpoints.
Defining Breakpoints for Responsive Components
Breakpoints are essential for building responsive components in React Native. They allow you to specify different styles for different screen sizes. To demonstrate this, let’s create an example card that maintains its styling on both widescreen devices and mobile screens.
Testing Responsiveness in Portrait and Landscape Modes
To test the responsiveness of your app in portrait and landscape modes, you’ll need to make some changes to your app.json file. Add a change to the orientation property to enable testing in both modes.
Improving App Responsiveness
React Native provides several properties that enable you to improve the responsiveness of your application. The useWindowDimensions Hook automatically updates the width and height of components when the screen size changes. You can also detect the platform on which the app is launched using the Platform module.
Implementing Split Views
A split view is a crucial component of many mobile apps. It manages the presentation of hierarchical content at the top level of your application. Let’s implement a split view in our app. First, create a navigation folder in your src folder and add three files: index.ts, sideNav.ts, and Navigator.ts.
Adding Mock Data for Display
The next step is to create your mail screens and add some mock data. You can use the Faker library and Lorem Ipsum Generator to generate mock data. Install the Faker library and its type declarations to enable it in your TypeScript application.
Creating the Mail Screen Component
Create a folder that contains your Mail components and a mock data file. Define your mail screen and add some mock data to it. Then, create an enum to strongly type your navigation between the different column screens.
Creating the Side Column Interface
Create a SideStack.tsx file to complete your side-column interface. Finally, create an index.tsx file in your Mail folder to complete your split view email screen.
The Final Result
In this tutorial, we’ve implemented a simple component that adapts its content to any screen size, showed a technique for adjusting screen width and height using the useWindowsDimensions Hook, and created a simple split view application. With Restyle and React Native, you can build responsive and customizable UI components that enhance the user experience of your mobile app.