{"id":2125,"date":"2020-03-16T12:47:12","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T09:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatlogic.com\/blog\/?p=2125"},"modified":"2024-01-13T12:57:08","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T09:57:08","slug":"why-i-don-t-want-to-use-react-native-with-expo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatlogic.com\/blog\/why-i-don-t-want-to-use-react-native-with-expo\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Don’t Want to Use React Native With Expo"},"content":{"rendered":"

We continue our set of articles about eliminating extra dependencies in the code<\/a>. You may find out more about our first article about removing jQuery here<\/a>. <\/p>

The main character of our article is Expo today. This is a set of tools every React<\/a> developer knows. It’s an instrument that makes your developers’ life much easier when you develop apps for iOS and Android<\/a>. Expo is about Over The Air updates without deployment on Google Play and Apple Store and sharing the app with the others without .apk or .ipa files. Expo is a toolchain that helps and guides you almost in every possible problem while developing. And finally, Expo is an extra-dependency we have got rid of in our product. You can read about it here<\/a>.  <\/p>

A Fast Review of Expo<\/strong><\/h2>

You can build applications with Expo in two ways: managed and bare workflow. Managed workflow is an Expo itself with all its advantages: Over The Air updates, build service, no need to use Xcode or Android Studio, Expo push notification service, etc. The bare workflow is when you use Expo SDK like a set of libraries (ExpoKit) that gives you access to the underlying native APIs. <\/p>

You can start using this approach by ejecting Expo from your app with the “expo eject” command (if you have already used Expo in development) or by running the “expo init” command to get started with Expo. In bare workflow, you get access to every APIs that Expo SDK contains, but you still have to work with Xcode and\/or Android studio. If you don’t use Expo in development either with managed workflow, or the bare workflow you work with Vanilla React Native<\/a>. But when Expo is ejected from the project that has contained Expo before, you still keep working with ExpoKit, because the functions in your project are based on the instrument from the kit. <\/p>

These are key terms and you need to understand them clearly. For more information visit official documentation<\/a>. Meanwhile, we are going on…<\/p>

Meet the Well-known Limitations of Expo<\/strong><\/h2>

Let just speak about the limitations of the Expo. But first of all, we want to emphasize that the developers of Expo took a prudent approach to write the documentation for Expo with included limitations of it. Therefore warned means armed. \"Professional <\/a><\/p>

In the documentation, there are a bunch of cases in which Expo fails. So we have an officially issued list<\/a> of Expo problems. Let’s check out this list and figure out what problems we face here. <\/p>