Navigator Best Practices

Navigator

Navigator is React Native’s default navigator. A Navigator component manages a stack of route objects, and provides methods for managing that stack.

<Navigator
  ref={(navigator) => { this.navigator = navigator }}
  initialRoute={{ id: 'route1', title: 'Route 1' }}
  renderScene={this.renderScene.bind(this)}
  configureScene={(route) => Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromRight}
  style={{ flex: 1 }}
  navigationBar={
    // see "Managing the Navigation Bar" below
    <Navigator.NavigationBar routeMapper={this.routeMapper} /> 
  }
/>

Managing the Route Stack

First of all, notice the initialRoute prop. A route is simply a javascript object, and can take whatever shape you want, and have whatever values you want. It’s the primary way you’ll pass values and methods between components in your navigation stack.

The Navigator knows what to render based on the value returned from its renderScene prop.

renderScene(route, navigator) {
  if (route.id === 'route1') {
    return <ExampleScene navigator={navigator} title={route.title} />; // see below
  } else if (route.id === 'route2') {
    return <ExampleScene navigator={navigator} title={route.title} />; // see below
  }
}

Let’s imagine an implementation of ExampleScene in this example:

function ExampleScene(props) {

  function forward() {
    // this route object will passed along to our `renderScene` function we defined above.
    props.navigator.push({ id: 'route2', title: 'Route 2' });
  }

  function back() {
    // `pop` simply pops one route object off the `Navigator`'s stack
    props.navigator.pop();
  }

  return (
    <View>
      <Text>{props.title}</Text>
      <TouchableOpacity onPress={forward}>
        <Text>Go forward!</Text>
      </TouchableOpacity>
      <TouchableOpacity onPress={back}>
        <Text>Go Back!</Text>
      </TouchableOpacity>
    </View>
  );
}

Configuring the Navigator

You can configure the Navigator’s transitions with the configureScene prop. This is a function that’s passed the route object, and needs to return a configuration object. These are the available configuration objects:

Navigator.SceneConfigs.PushFromRight (default)
Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromRight
Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromLeft
Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromBottom
Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromBottomAndroid
Navigator.SceneConfigs.FadeAndroid
Navigator.SceneConfigs.HorizontalSwipeJump
Navigator.SceneConfigs.HorizontalSwipeJumpFromRight
Navigator.SceneConfigs.VerticalUpSwipeJump
Navigator.SceneConfigs.VerticalDownSwipeJump

You can return one of these objects without modification, or you can modify the configuration object to customize the navigation transitions. For example, to modify the edge hit width to more closely emulate the iOS UINavigationController’s interactivePopGestureRecognizer:

configureScene={(route) => {
  return {
    ...Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromRight,
    gestures: {
      pop: {
        ...Navigator.SceneConfigs.FloatFromRight.gestures.pop,
        edgeHitWidth: Dimensions.get('window').width / 2,
      },
    },
  };
}}

Managing the NavigationBar

The Navigator component comes with a navigationBar prop, which can theoretically take any properly configured React component. But the most common implementation uses the default Navigator.NavigationBar. This takes a routeMapper prop that you can use to configure the appearance of the navigation bar based on the route.

A routeMapper is a regular javascript object with three functions: Title, RightButton, and LeftButton. For example:

const routeMapper = {

  LeftButton(route, navigator, index, navState) {
    if (index === 0) {
      return null;
    }

    return (
      <TouchableOpacity
        onPress={() => navigator.pop()}
        style={styles.navBarLeftButton}
      >
        <Text>Back</Text>
      </TouchableOpacity>
    );
  },

  RightButton(route, navigator, index, navState) {
    return (
      <TouchableOpacity
        onPress={route.handleRightButtonClick}
        style={styles.navBarRightButton}
      >
        <Text>Next</Text>
      </TouchableOpacity>
   );
  },

  Title(route, navigator, index, navState) {
    return (
      <Text>
        {route.title}
      </Text>
    );
  },
};

See more

For more detailed documentation of each prop, see the the official React Native Documentation for Navigator, and the React Native guide on Using Navigators.

Use react-navigation for navigation in react native apps

With the help of react-navigation, you can add navigation to your app really easy.

Install react-navigation

npm install --save react-navigation

Example:

import { Button, View, Text, AppRegistry } from 'react-native';
import { StackNavigator } from 'react-navigation';

const App = StackNavigator({
  FirstPage: {screen: FirstPage},
  SecondPage: {screen: SecondPage},
});

class FirstPage extends React.Component {
  static navigationOptions = {
    title: 'Welcome',
  };
  render() {
    const { navigate } = this.props.navigation;

    return (
      <Button
        title='Go to Second Page'
        onPress={() =>
          navigate('SecondPage', { name: 'Awesomepankaj' })
        }
      />
    );
  }
}

class SecondPage extends React.Component {
  static navigationOptions = ({navigation}) => ({
    title: navigation.state.params.name,
  });

  render() {
    const { goBack } = this.props.navigation;
    return (
      <View>
        <Text>Welcome to Second Page</Text>
        <Button
          title="Go back to First Page"
          onPress={() => goBack()}
        />
      </View>
    );
  }
}

react-native Navigation with react-native-router-flux

Install by using npm install --save react-native-router-flux

In react-native-router-flux, each route is called a <Scene>

<Scene key="home" component={LogIn} title="Home" initial />

key A unique string that can be used to refer to the particular scene.

component Which component to show, here it’s

title make a NavBar and give it a title ‘Home’

initial Is this the first screen of the App

Example:

import React from 'react';
import { Scene, Router } from 'react-native-router-flux';
import LogIn from './components/LogIn';
import SecondPage from './components/SecondPage';

const RouterComponent = () => {
  return (
    <Router>
      <Scene key="login" component={LogIn} title="Login Form" initial />
      <Scene key="secondPage" component={SecondPage} title="Home" />
    </Router>
  );
};

export default RouterComponent;

Import this file in the main App.js(index file) and render it. For more information can visit this link.