React Native WebView

React Native WebView

In this post, you will see how to Open any Website in React Native WebView. React Native WebView is a component to render the web page into your mobile app. This is supported by Android and IOs both. WebView is very useful as you can open any web link in your app itself so when anybody wants to browse your referred link they don’t need to open any other app for that.

To Import WebView in Code

import { WebView} from 'react-native-webview'

Render Using

<WebView source={{uri: 'https://aboutreact.com'}}/>

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 WebView you need to install react-native-webview dependency. To install this dependency open the terminal and jump into your project

cd ProjectName

Run the following commands

npm install react-native-webview --save

This command will copy the dependency into your node_module directory. –save is optional, it is just to update the dependency in your package.json file.

CocoaPods Installation

After the updation of React Native 0.60, they have introduced autolinking so we do not require to link the library but need to install pods. So to install pods use

npx pod-install

Code

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

App.js

//React Native WebView
//https://aboutreact.com/react-native-webview/

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

//import all the components we are going to use
import {SafeAreaView} from 'react-native';

import {WebView} from 'react-native-webview';

const App = () => {
  return (
    <SafeAreaView style={{flex: 1}}>
      <WebView
        source={{uri: 'https://aboutreact.com'}}
        style={{marginTop: 20}}
      />
    </SafeAreaView>
  );
};

export default App;

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

Output Screenshot

Output in Online Emulator

That was the React Native Webview. If you have any doubts or you want to share something about the topic you can comment below or contact us here. The remaining components will be covered in the next article. Stay tuned!

Hope you liked it. 🙂