Make Phone Call, Send SMS or Email Using React Native Communication

React Native Communication

This is an Example to Make Phone Call, Send SMS or Email Using React Native Communication. We will use the Communications Component provided by react-native-communications. This is a very easy-to-integrate library which can be used for very useful tasks like Making phone calls, Sending Text SMS, or for Sending Emails.

The most important point to note here is that all the things will trigger the respective applications to handle the task like when we call a function to make a phone call it will open a Dialer application with a prefilled number supplied by us from our App. Similar to the SMS and mail.

Types of Different Activity

In this example, we will see 4 types of different activities:

1. Make a Phone Call.
2. Send SMS.
3. Send Email.
4. Open a web URL in the browser.

You can also visit Example to Send Text SMS on Button Click in React Native using react-native-sms and Example to Make a Phone Call in React Native App using react-native-phone-call.

Now let’s get started with the example.

To Import React Native Communication

1. Either import the whole module and call

import Communications from 'react-native-communications';
// Communications.phonecall('0123456789', true)

2. Or import single methods and call

import { web, phonecall } from 'react-native-communications';
// phonecall('0123456789', true)

Here are the code snippets to perform the above-mentioned activities:

Make Phone Call using

Communications.phonecall(phoneNumber, prompt)

Send Email using

Communications.email(To, CC, BCC, Subject, Body)

Send SMS using

Communications.text(phoneNumber = null, body = null)

Open a web URL using

Communications.web(address = null)

For this example, we will make a home screen with 4 different buttons to make a call, Send SMS, Send Email, and open a URL in browsers.

To Make a React Native App

Getting started with React Native will help you to know more about the way you can make a React Native project. We are going to use react native command line interface to make our React Native App.

If you have previously installed a global react-native-cli package, please remove it as it may cause unexpected issues:

npm uninstall -g react-native-cli @react-native-community/cli

Run the following commands to create a new React Native project

npx react-native init ProjectName

If you want to start a new project with a specific React Native version, you can use the --version argument:

npx react-native init ProjectName --version X.XX.X

Note If the above command is failing, you may have old version of react-native or react-native-cli installed globally on your pc. Try uninstalling the cli and run the cli using npx.

This will make a project structure with an index file named App.js in your project directory.

Installation of Dependency

To use Communication we need to install react-native-communications dependency.

To install this open the terminal and jump into your project using

cd ProjectName

Run the following command to install

npm install react-native-communications --save

This command will copy all the dependencies into your node_module directory.

–save is optional, it is just to update the react-native-communications dependency in your package.json file.

Code for Phone Call, SMS, Email

Now Open App.js in any code editor and replace the code with the following code

App.js

// Make Phone Call, Send SMS or Email Using React Native Communication
// https://aboutreact.com/make-phone-call-send-sms-or-email-using-react-native-communication/

// import React in our code
import React from 'react';

// import all the components we are going to use
import {
  SafeAreaView,
  StyleSheet,
  View,
  Text,
  TouchableOpacity,
} from 'react-native';

// 1. Either import the whole module
import Communications from 'react-native-communications';
/* 2. Or import single methods
 import {
  phonecall,
  email,
  text,
  web
} from 'react-native-communications';*/

const App = () => {
  return (
    <SafeAreaView style={styles.container}>
      <View style={styles.container}>
        <Text style={styles.titleText}>
          Make Phone Call, Send SMS or Email
          Using React Native Communication
        </Text>
        {/* Call: phonecall(phoneNumber, prompt) */}
        <TouchableOpacity
          activeOpacity={0.7}
          style={styles.buttonStyle}
          onPress={
            () => Communications.phonecall('0123456789',true)
          }>
          <Text style={styles.buttonTextStyle}>
            Make Phone Call
          </Text>
        </TouchableOpacity>
        {/* Mail: email(to, cc, bcc, subject, body) */}
        <TouchableOpacity
          activeOpacity={0.7}
          style={styles.buttonStyle}
          onPress={() =>
            Communications.email(
              [
                'aboutreact11@gmail.com',
                'hello@aboutreact.com'
              ],
              null,
              null,
              'Demo Subject',
              'Demo Content for the mail',
            )
          }>
          <Text style={styles.buttonTextStyle}>
            Send an Email
          </Text>
        </TouchableOpacity>
        {/* SMS: text(phoneNumber = null, body = null) */}
        <TouchableOpacity
          activeOpacity={0.7}
          style={styles.buttonStyle}
          onPress={() =>
            Communications.text(
              '0123456789',
              'Follow https://aboutreact.com'
            )
          }>
          <Text style={styles.buttonTextStyle}>
            Send a Text/iMessage
          </Text>
        </TouchableOpacity>
        {/* Web: web(address = null)*/}
        <TouchableOpacity
          activeOpacity={0.7}
          style={styles.buttonStyle}
          onPress={
            () => Communications.web('https://aboutreact.com')
          }>
          <Text style={styles.buttonTextStyle}>
            Open AboutReact
          </Text>
        </TouchableOpacity>
      </View>
    </SafeAreaView>
  );
};

export default App;

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    backgroundColor: 'white',
    padding: 10,
  },
  titleText: {
    fontSize: 22,
    textAlign: 'center',
    fontWeight: 'bold',
  },
  buttonStyle: {
    justifyContent: 'center',
    marginTop: 15,
    padding: 10,
    backgroundColor: '#8ad24e',
  },
  buttonTextStyle: {
    color: '#fff',
    textAlign: 'center',
  },
});

To Run the React Native App

Open the terminal again and jump into your project using.

cd ProjectName

1. Start Metro Bundler

First, you will need to start Metro, the JavaScript bundler that ships with React Native. To start Metro bundler run following command:

npx react-native start

Once you start Metro Bundler it will run forever on your terminal until you close it. Let Metro Bundler run in its own terminal. Open a new terminal and run the application.

2. Start React Native Application

To run the project on an Android Virtual Device or on real debugging device:

npx react-native run-android

or on the iOS Simulator by running (macOS only)

npx react-native run-ios

FAQ: How perform the actions directly from my react native application without opening the default app?
Ans: Sorry but this is not possible with this library. This is a cross platform solution which does not provide the same, you need to manage some native logic to do that.
For the phone call related you can see react-native-immediate-phone-call, with that library no additional user input is required for Android and the call starts instantly (Apple always asks confirmation since the last iOS updates…)

Output Screenshots

Android

IOS

This is how you can Make Phone Call, Send SMS, or Email Using React Native Communication. If you have any doubts or want to share something about the topic you can comment below or contact us here. There will be more posts coming soon. Stay tuned!

Hope you liked it. 🙂