Native Modules NPM Package Setup
Native Module and Native Components are our stable technologies used by the legacy architecture. They will be deprecated in the future when the New Architecture will be stable. The New Architecture uses Turbo Native Module and Fabric Native Components to achieve similar results.
Native modules are usually distributed as npm packages, except that on top of the usual JavaScript they will include some native code per platform. To understand more about npm packages you may find this guide useful.
To get set up with the basic project structure for a native module we will use the community tool called create-react-native-library. You can go ahead further and dive deep into how that library works, but for our needs we will only execute the basic script:
npx create-react-native-library@latest react-native-awesome-module
Where react-native-awesome-module is the name you would like for the new module. After doing this you will navigate into react-native-awesome-module folder and bootstrap the example project by running:
yarn
When the bootstrap is done, you will be able to start the example app by executing one of the following commands:
# Android app
yarn example android
# iOS app
yarn example ios
When all steps above are done, you will be able to continue with Android Native Modules or iOS Native Modules guides to add in some code.
For a less opinionated setup, have a look at the third party tool create-react-native-module.