Improve Native UI Components Documentation

[MrGVSV]

Description

There is very little detail in the documentation for Native UI Components. The documentation should be updated for both iOS and Android to reflect the basics of what can be done.

Links: Android | iOS

What is the problem?

The documentation is very sparse when it comes to things like:

Creating Native UI Components in Swift

The documentation only explains how to create a UI Module in Objective-C. I can't speak for everyone, but I much prefer working in Swift. In order to understand how to create a bridge from React Native to Objective-C to Swift took many hours of reading through blog posts and forums. Unfortunately, the documentation on the React Native site only mentions Swift in the Native Modules section.

Implementing Commands in Android

There is no documentation for calling a Native View's method on Android via UIManager.dispatchViewManagerCommand. Furthermore, receiveCommand(@NonNull ITCameraView root, int commandId, @Nullable ReadableArray args) is deprecated, and there is no documentation on the updated version.

How can we address it?

Add to documentation to better illustrate how to implement a Native UI Component on both iOS and Android. Additionally, organize documentation subsections (e.g. renaming "Handling multiple native views" to "Calling native methods", etc.)

Why is it important?

Good documentation saves developers hours upon hours of time trying to solve an issue.

Who needs this?

Anyone who wants to create custom Native UI Components for their own projects or for plugins that spare others having to do so themselves.

When should this happen (use version numbers if needed)?

This is not a high priority issue, but could be addressed as soon as the current version (0.63).

[Simek]

Refs #706, #1064, #1569, #1708, #2107 and more.

[betoharres]

I agree, and as a newbie that would like to start creating native modules to react-native on android:
Where's the imports? where should I search for such information? I'd like to contribute if at least I'd know where to look at :/
I don't get it why the person omitted such info; I'm scavenging popular repos just to copy/paste these things

I thing that it would be much easier and much better for newbies AND maintainers to just create an example repo showing off Native module and component UIs; people could even contribute directly to the repo by adding different types of examples, like the basics to gather video/audio data, etc... that'd be a game changer for react-native

[Simek]

@MrGVSV, @betoharres please check out the updated Native Modules and Native Components guides pushed lately within #2261 PR:

• https://reactnative.dev/docs/native-modules-intro
• https://reactnative.dev/docs/native-components-android
• https://reactnative.dev/docs/native-components-ios

I would like to know what you think about the pages after the update and if your previous issues has been addressed.

[betoharres]

@Simek Thanks a lot for updating the docs! It looks better now! I'll try to make a new ui module and give a better feedback here :)

[stale]

👋 Hey there, it looks like there has been no activity on this issue recently. Has the issue been fixed, or does it still require the community's attention? This issue may be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[github-actions]

Closing this issue after a prolonged period of inactivity. If this issue is still present in the latest release, please feel free to create a new issue with up-to-date information.