Reactjs app how to use / run it and the possibility to mobile

Question

I have some questions regarding React development:

• First I've created an app, so my project is ready, how do I use it? As react is just a javascript library, do I just place HTML on my web server and it will work? For me it should be simple I should have HTML file as output and can open and try it out, but I think it is not so simple, can you advise on that?
• Second, knowing react, and creating react app, can I then make an iOS or Android app from it and deploy it in the store? Or it is more complicated?
• Do you know any examples of react-apps and real-life usage? Honestly, I don't know directly in what case should I use react? Or for what should I make one, instead I just could always use HTML + javascript.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You can always visit the documentation section of the ReactJS Github Page and see the Deployment Part which I let the link here.

I don’t really know about exporting ReactJS to iOS or Android but I guess I know that Electron is a good option to export to Desktop devices in which you have to build your application, but I wonder if you can achieve a similar cross-Platform experience using Service Workers.

I hope I helped a bit and help you look into different options to use Javascript, HTML, CSS, etc in cross-platforms.

Answer 2

Answering your questions in order:

1: If you had created your react app already then you'd be able to use it. React can be installed in many different ways, and "React" can mean a lot of things. I highly recommend reading though the documentation as it explains the different ways of using it in detail.

You can use react without using any build process (explained in the link above) but most of the time you will use a build process (most likely webpack). Since setting a build process for React from scratch can be daunting, it's highly recommended you use an easy to use tool such as Create React App. There are production ready, heavy traffic websites built atop CRA, so no need to worry about "this is just for dev", plus you can always export it and make your own changes.

There's also NextJS which a fantastic React framework and it includes Server-Side Rendering out of the box.

More tools are listed in the official documentation.

2: No and no. React is just the low-level implementation. For the web we use React-DOM, which handles all the DOM specifics. If you want to create an Android/iOS app then you need to use React Native, which is a different thing, but built atop React as well, with the same principles and very similar. You will be able to reuse a lot of your code from a "normal" React app.

3: There are tons. Most Sigle Page Apps nowadays are being built by it. Some examples built with Nextjs