react-native-app-navigator

Note: This packaged depends on NavigationExperimental, which is a deprecated library, and may not work with newer versions of React Native

Easily set up navigation within your app: react-native-app-navigator allows pushing and popping scenes based on a centrally maintained stack of routes, all the while showing a customisable navigation bar.

react-native-app-navigator is built as a wrapper around React Native's (now deprecated) NavigationExperimental. It makes some of the decisions for you and uses a generic reducer, providing a simpler interface and a couple of extra treats.

• Installation
• Why Use
• Usage
  • Props
  • renderScene(navigationProps)

Installation

npm install --save react-native-app-navigator

Why Use

• Simple interface due to internal implementation of a generic reducer, taking away some of the pain of NavigationExperimental
• Provides easily customisable navigation bar across the app and/or for specific pages - just pass through functions as props to render the centre and right components
• Extra props can be seamlessly passed through from parent to child scene, as an argument in the call to onNavigate
• Every scene can check a prop topRoute to check if it is currently at the top of the navigation stack

Usage

The Navigator is intended to be a container component, capturing your whole app. It retains some of the mechanisms of NavigationExperimental, such as passing in a renderScene function to dynamically define the contents of a given route, as well as a few extra things.

Props

Prop Name	Type	Description
renderScene	function	A callback that dynamically defines the content within Navigator, given a route. Details below.
navBarStyle	style	Will override styling of the NavigationHeader (top nav bar)
renderRightComponent	function	Optional callback that defines what is at the right of the nav bar (e.g. a logout button) N.B. will be overridden by any renderCentreComponent passed through within the extraProps argument to onNavigate (see below)
renderCentreComponent	function	Optional callback that defines what is in the middle of the nav bar (e.g. a company logo).
backgroundColor	string	Defines the colour behind the scenes
headerViewProps	object	Props to pass through to the view enclosing the nav bar content
title	string	The label to display on the left of the nav bar (next to the back button, e.g. the page title)

renderScene(navigationProps)

An important part of using react-native-app-navigator is implementing renderScene, the callback that dynamically defines the content within Navigator, given a route.

The function takes in two arguments

• route (object) - contains all the details about the scene to be rendered, with the following properties:
  • key (string) - A unique key indicating what page/scene should be rendered. Before any navigation, this will be 'root', so renderScene should handle rendering the default page in this instance
  • topRoute (boolean) - True if this scene is currently on the top of the navigation stack (being rendered)
  • Any additional properties that were provided in the navigationAction passed to onNavigate (other than those used by Navigator, see below)
• onNavigate (function(key, title, extraProps, navType)) - a function that can be called to navigate to a different scene, taking a single navigationAction parameter defining the navigation. This navigationAction is an object with the following properties:
  • key (string, required) - A unique key indicating what page/scene is being navigated to. This is generally used in renderScene to determine what to render
  • title (string, optional) - A string to display on the left of the navigation bar after navigating (e.g. the title of the new page)
  • extraProps (object, optional) - Any additional properties that are simply passed through as extra properties in the route given to renderScene. A good way to get information from the parent page to the child in the form of props. If a special key, renderRightComponent, is included, this will be the function used to render the right hand component of the navigation bar for that scene
  • navType (string, optional) - Optionally define what kind of navigation action this is. Defaults to a push. Options are:
    • push - Adds a new scene on to the stack and navigates to it
    • pop - Removes the top scene from the stack, navigating to the one just below
    • replace - Adds a new scene on to the stack, navigates to it, and removes the current top one
    • replacePreviousAndPop - Replaces the scene one below the top with a new scene and pops the current scene to navigate to the new one

Note: Initial renderScene is called with a route having the key 'root', so renderScene should handle rendering the default page in this instance

  /**
  * Returns either the Home page or the Calendar page, depending on the route (with any extra props passed on to CalendarPage)
  **/
  renderScene(route, onNavigate) {
    const { key, ...extraProps } = route;
    switch (key) {
      default:
      case 'root':
        return (
          <HomePage handleTappingMonth={(month) => {
            onNavigate(
              'calender',
              month,
              { monthToDisplay: month, backgroundImage: this.props.backgroundImage }
            )}}
           />);
      case 'calendar':
        return <CalendarPage {...extraProps} />;
    }
  }