React Native Support
Meta's React Native and Developer Tooling teams work in close collaboration to ensure Flipper offers top-notch out-of-the-box value for React Native development.
Integration between React Native and Flipper is enabled out of the box in React Native version 0.62 and higher.
For the setup instructions for React Native, see the Desktop App page.
The following 37-minute video provides interesting information on 'Flipper: the extensible DevTool Platform for React Native`.
Device type: React Native​
In Flipper, the dedicated device type, 'React Native', connects to a locally running Metro instance to interact with your React Native app. This device is detected as soon as you fire up a Metro instance by running yarn run ios or yarn run android in your project.
If Metro is connected, two new buttons appear in Flipper’s main toolbar: 'Reload' and 'Open Dev Menu': both do exactly as their name suggests. The 'React Native' device feature two plugins out of the box: 'Logs' and 'React DevTools', as shown in the following screenshot.
The React DevTools allows you to inspect the component tree and tune the props and state of your React components.
The Logs plugins allow you to search, filter and place watch expressions on your logging output. This offers a much richer way to interact with your logs compared to the terminal output of Metro!
Native plugins for React Native​
Beyond the React Native-specific Flipper plugins described above, with Flipper you also inherit the plugin eco-system that exists for native Android and iOS apps. This means that you are able to use plugins that are also aimed at native apps for your React Native app.
Example plugins include:
- Device logs
- Device crash reporter
- Inspecting network requests
- Inspecting app local databases
- Inspecting device preferences
- Inspecting cached images
- Inspecting native layout elements
Writing JavaScript plugins for React Native + Flipper​
One of the advantages of Flipper is its extensibility. Many teams across Meta already have written their own one-off plugins that help with analysing very specific use cases. Writing plugins for Flipper doesn't require any native code, as the Flipper SDK is exposed directly to JavaScript through the react-native-flipper package.
The following screenshot shows an example Flipper plugin, where a game of Tic Tac Toe uses Flipper and some emulators.
If you'd like to build a specific (or generic) extension for Flipper, take a look at the following pointers:
Plugins for Flipper can be distributed through NPM so sharing them is trivial.
Community React Native plugins for Flipper​
The React Native community has also started to build plugins for Flipper.
Reactotron's Flipper plugin is an example of a standalone React Native desktop app that is ported to work as a Flipper plugin. For more information, see the Better React Native Debugging with Reactotron in Flipper web page.
If you've got your own Flipper plugin for React Native that you'd like to advertise, please send the Litho team a pull request!