Adrian Hall

Adrian Hall

Microsoft Program Manager by day; Mobile Developer by night

Recent posts

Creating a React Native bridge library

January 19, 2018  7 minute read  

React Native is really good at straddling the line between native and JavaScript. There is a bridge between the two that allows you to call native code from JavaScript. This is awesome for including things that require a special touch. Most React Native developers will never need to worry about the bridge because libraries exist to wrap a lot of the common native libraries that you see in Android and iOS. But what if you want to create a bridge library of your own? That’s a whole other effor...

AsyncStorage, TypeScript, and Async/await in React Native

August 21, 2017  4 minute read  

In the last few posts, I’ve been working on a Notes app in a master-detail pattern for React Native using TypeScript. This is the last post about that project. So far, I’ve: Worked out how to handle orientation changes. Worked out how to implement swipe-to-delete. Figured out the best way to use TypeScript. Integrated MobX for the Flux pattern. Fixed up the project for universal iOS apps. Finally written the Master-Detail pattern. That’s a lot of stuff. This last post is about...

Building a Master-Detail Pattern in React Native

August 16, 2017  5 minute read  

I’m in the middle of writing a simple Notes app in React Native. Thus far, I’ve: Worked out how to handle orientation changes. Worked out how to implement swipe-to-delete. Figured out the best way to use TypeScript. Integrated MobX for the Flux pattern. Fixed up the project for universal iOS apps. Now it’s time to get to the master-detail pattern itself. Master-Detail is a basic pattern that incorporates a list (the master) and a detail page. On phones (and tablets in portrait m...

Universal iOS Apps with React Native

August 14, 2017  less than 1 minute read  

This is one of those short “tip” posts. I was developing a nice React Native app and blogging about it. However, I bumped into a problem where my iOS simulator runs always appeared as if they were on an iPhone. If I ran the app on an iPad, it would still act as if it were on an iPhone. The fix for this is buried inside XCode. Open XCode and then open the .xcodeproj file, which is inside the ios folder of your project. Then click on the project name. You will see a section like this: Note...

Integrating React Native, TypeScript, and MobX

August 11, 2017  5 minute read  

In my last article, I psted about getting TypeScript working with React Native. I’m building a flexible, best-practices, Notes App in React Native. This means I need a backing store, and it has to be local for offline capabilities. React has a definite way of building data into the UI and the manipulation of that data is an architecture known as Flux. Flux isn’t a concrete implementation, however. Normally, I would use Redux as the concrete implementation. However, I have recently started wor...