React & React Native Remote Meetup, March 2021 | RNBlr x GeekyAnts

New products and new announcements was the theme of this installment of the occasional React & React Native remote meetup, organized and hosted by RNBLR & GeekyAnts.

Two hours of all things React & React Native alongside an amazing lineup of talks delivered by some of the most brilliant minds in the community constituted the perfect Saturday.

As always, the following is a quick account of the events that transpired at the Meetup:

React Native Firebase Dynamic Links: Plaban Rajkhowa

Plaban opened the event with his talk on how to create and implement dynamic links in React Native apps using Firebase. Dynamic links are the kind of links that interconnect various sections of applications to provide a more personalized and targeted experience. They’re used to reinforce context (like accessing special sections of an app, redirecting to app stores if the app is not installed etc.). Plaban walked the viewers through the installation and addition process of Firebase into a React Native app, followed by a detailed step-by-step guide of how to create dynamic links using the Firebase console in the browser. Once the dynamic link is created, a separate setup for Android and iOS devices is required to be able to listen to the dynamic links created in foreground and background states, which was also covered in his talk by Plaban.

React Native Aria - First Impressions: Nishan Bende

Nishan Bende, Software Engineer at GeekyAnts, opened up about the latest project he’s been working on. In line with React Aria, the accessibility design system built by Adobe, Nishan has been a part of bringing the accessibility design systems to React Native. He distinguished between interactive and non interactive elements in terms of accessibility and used demos of the same to establish the differences. As an open source project, Nishan delved deep into the code of the demos that he used for his presentation as explained how he achieved voice-over features for people with vision impairment for better navigation and accessibility. He also presented similar accessibility features for webpages on browsers and broke down different regions and how accessibility is applied to them. He also touched upon how the concept would apply on React Native Web.

Rapid React: Vinay Sharma

Vinay Sharma, a seasoned developer and returning speaker to the RN meetups talked about his newest pet project, a CLI tool called Rapid React. Vinay designed Rapid React to reduce the time taken to start new React projects by scaffolding ReactJS applications from scratch. It develops folder structures, writes boilerplate code for State Management and does pretty much everything you need to start a project. He discussed its many features and explained every aspect of the tool. He talked about the Interface Design, Functionality Logic, Data Structures used and the logic behind the algorithms. He then ran the tool, bootstrapped a new React project from scratch and discussed the roadmaps of Rapid React, before being interrupted by the notification sound of Rapid React completing the scaffolding process.

Building A Form Library For React: Aditya Jamuar

As the last speaker of the day, Aditya Jamuar handled the pace of the event and took a step back with his talk on building forms for React. He talked about how validation is one of the most important aspects of submitting data online and that extensive validation techniques can make code complex and hard to maintain. This is where form libraries come in. He claims that the problem with today’s many form libraries available in the market is the fact that they focus a lot of UI and pledges his allegiance to the concept of ‘UI as an afterthought’. He shared his goals and philosophy behind developing the ideal form model and then went on to display how he applied these concepts to create a form library that helped him in one of his projects.

Watch the entire session here: