Using Android Native Modules in React Native

React Native stands out from other cross-platform frameworks, as it allows you to develop functionalities specific to your requirements using native modules.

In other words, you can develop the platform-specific functionality in the platform’s native environment (Java or Kotlin for Android, Swift or Objective C for iOS) and then use the React Native bridge to communicate with these native APIs through JavaScript.

React Native goes a step further to reduce the complexity of the process, and provides a documented way to achieve this functionality in the form of native modules, so that developers don’t need to understand the internals of how the React Native bridge works, and can move straight to shipping features quickly.

Nonetheless, it still requires the developer to have some understanding of the platform’s native environment and be able to code the required functionality in the programming language for that platform. This becomes a limiting factor for a lot of developers, especially the ones who don’t have any background in mobile application development and haven’t worked on Android or iOS before. And even for developers with some experience in native development, the process for creating native modules is a bit complex and can be time consuming.

In this tutorial, we’ll simplify things and go through the process of creating a native module for Android.