A Quick Guide to Creating React Native Mobile App with Django Framework

React Native / Django Implementation for Beginners

The following section shows a basic tutorial on how to start coding with these two frameworks.

Setting up a React Native project

Step 1: First you need to install node and watchman. To do so, run the following commands on the terminal, after installing Homebrew.

brew install node

brew install watchman

Step 2: Installing an iOS Simulator in Xcode

To install a simulator, open Xcode> Preferences… and select the Components tab. Select a simulator with the corresponding version of iOS that you wish to use.

sudo gem install cocoapods

Step 3: Creating the project folder

npx react-native initAwesomeProject

Once you run the above command in the terminal, it will generate a project with a folder structure for iOS and android.

Step 4: Start the Metro JavaScript bundler.

npx react-native start

Step 5: Start the Application in iOS simulator

To do so, run the command below.

npx react-native run-ios

Setting up Django

Install python and pip and then run the following commands to install the corresponding packages.

pip install django

pip install django rest framework

Step 1: Navigate to any folder that you want to use to create the Django project, open the command prompt, and enter the following command:

django-admin startproject Sample Project

Step 2: Navigate to the project folder and create a web app using the command below:

python manage.py start app MyApp

Step 3: Open the settings.py file and add the lines of code mentioned below, in the INSTALLED_APPS section:

‘rest_framework’,

‘MyApp’,

Step 4: Open views.py inside the MyApp folder and add the lines of code mentioned below:

from django.shortcuts import render

from django.http import Http404

from rest_framework.views import APIView

from rest_framework.decorators import api_view

from rest_framework.response import Response

from rest_framework import status

from django.http import JsonResponse

from django.core import serializers

from django.conf import settings

import json

# Create your views here.

@api_view ([“POST”])

defIdealWeight(heightdata):

try:

height=json.loads(heightdata.body)

weight=str(height*10)

returnJsonResponse(“Ideal weight should be:”+weight+” kg”,safe=False)

exceptValueErrorase:

returnResponse(e.args[0],status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

The IdealWeight(heightdate) is the method that gets executed when an API call is made. It has a simple logic to calculate weight (=height*10). The line return JsonResponse(…) will send the response back.

Step 5: Open urls.py and add the lines of code mentioned below:

from django.conf.urls import url

from django.contrib import admin

from MyAppimportviews

urlpatterns = [

url(r’^admin/’, admin.site.urls),

url(r’^idealweight/’,views.IdealWeight)

]

Step 6: you can start the API using the commands below, in the command prompt:

python manage.py runserver

The Django project has a fundamental configuration, which is illustrated by the instructions that were just presented. REST APIs can add more functionality through additional routes, functions, and middleware.