First steps into mobile development with React Native and Expo

This year, I started writing Looplio’s mobile client. Looplio is a personal project I’ve been working on for a while: the API side is written in Laravel, and it already has a web interface. The mobile piece was missing. I kept telling myself “when the time is right” and put it off — this summer I decided to actually start.

I chose React Native and Expo. I had JavaScript and React experience on the web side, so the knowledge transfer seemed reasonable. That turned out to be partly true and partly wrong.

Expo or bare React Native

The first decision was whether to go with Expo’s managed workflow or plain React Native CLI. I did my research; the managed workflow covered most of my use cases. I needed features that don’t require writing native modules — things that Expo’s package ecosystem already handles: camera, notifications, secure storage, push notifications.

The development experience with the Expo Go app is fast. You change the code, you see it on your phone immediately. The hot reload habit from the web carries over nicely.

npx create-expo-app looplio-mobile
cd looplio-mobile
npx expo start

After that, it’s just scanning the QR code to connect your phone to the dev server.

What I brought from the web, what I had to leave behind

React knowledge transfers well for the most part. Component logic, useState, useEffect, props — all the same. What React Native doesn’t have is HTML tags; View replaces div, Text replaces p, Image replaces img. This transition internalizes within a few days.

Styling is a different story. There’s no CSS; instead you have StyleSheet, written as JavaScript objects. It’s Flexbox-based, but there are behavioral differences compared to web Flexbox. flex: 1 on mobile means “fill remaining space,” but its behavior isn’t always as predictable as on the web. You have to see these differences firsthand.

import { View, Text, StyleSheet } from 'react-native'

export default function EventCard({ title, date }) {
    return (
        <View style={styles.card}>
            <Text style={styles.title}>{title}</Text>
            <Text style={styles.date}>{date}</Text>
        </View>
    )
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
    card: {
        backgroundColor: '#fff',
        padding: 16,
        borderRadius: 8,
        marginBottom: 12,
    },
    title: {
        fontSize: 16,
        fontWeight: '600',
        color: '#1a1a1a',
    },
    date: {
        fontSize: 14,
        color: '#666',
        marginTop: 4,
    },
})

Navigation is the first major difference

On the web, navigation is URL-based; the browser manages history. On mobile, none of that exists. The React Navigation library fills that gap, but the mental model is different. Stack navigators, tab navigators, drawer navigators — and they can all be nested inside each other.

For Looplio I went with tab navigation: a home tab, calendar, notifications, and profile. I used a stack inside each tab. This structure settled in after some trial and error; it wasn’t clean on the first attempt.

API integration: easier than expected

This part was genuinely easier than I anticipated. I had already built and documented the Laravel API, and it was running. Making requests from the mobile side to the same endpoints using fetch or Axios isn’t much different from the JavaScript code on the web.

For authentication I used Expo SecureStore; the token is stored securely and attached to the header on every request. This approach requires a few lines of setup, then it just works transparently.

Where things stand now

As of late August, the core screens are working: login, event list, event detail, create new event. Notifications and some features are still missing, but there’s a skeleton in place.

Being a web developer makes getting started with React Native easier — but it doesn’t fully prepare you. Mobile has its own mindset: touch targets, screen transition animations, keyboard behavior, memory and performance constraints. These things surface gradually.

The next step is filling in those gaps and using Expo’s build infrastructure to produce a test release. I’ll cover that in the next journal entry.