For the last couple of years, Facebook has been working to help build a cross-platform development platform called React.

With React Native for Android, Facebook has now given developers the ability to create Web, iOS and Android apps with the same core set of code. React was open-sourced in 2013 followed by React Native in March at the F8 conference. Our goal was to create a new app to let the millions of people who advertise on Facebook manage their accounts and create new ads on the go. And while React Native may not quite be ready for primetime, Facebook has built what looks like a robust and flexible platform to build apps that look and perform like native apps with JavaScript.

React Native is meant to make developers efficient via a learn once, write anywhere paradigm.

React Native for both iOS and Android is now open source. React Native is a Javascript library created by Facebook intended for building user interfaces with one set of code across platforms. Some design differences between iOS and Android had to be mitigated as well.

The Facebook team is now spearheading the effort of unifying mobile app development with tools like React Native, and developers should be glad they won’t have to maintain two or sometimes three codebases for the same service/application. These components can be incorporated into an app using React component counterparts suchas TabBarIOS and DrawerLayoutAndroid.

SD Times reports that React Native uses a Javascript structure for native development.

In addition, the company announced it will be moving to a unified repository for Android and iOS platforms, and it will be building integration tests to run on every revision.