RactiveJS vs React Native: What are the differences?
Developers describe RactiveJS as "Next-generation DOM manipulation". Ractive was originally created at theguardian.com to produce news applications. Ractive takes your Mustache templates and transforms them into a lightweight representation of the DOM – then when your data changes, it intelligently updates the real DOM. On the other hand, React Native is detailed as "A framework for building native apps with React". React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
RactiveJS belongs to "Templating Languages & Extensions" category of the tech stack, while React Native can be primarily classified under "Cross-Platform Mobile Development".
Some of the features offered by RactiveJS are:
- Ractive.js is a template-driven UI library, but unlike other tools that generate inert HTML, it transforms your templates into blueprints for apps that are interactive by default.
- Two-way binding, animations, SVG support and more are provided out-of-the-box – but you can add whatever functionality you need by downloading and creating plugins.
- Some tools force you to learn a new vocabulary and structure your app in a particular way. Ractive works for you, not the other way around – and it plays well with other libraries.
On the other hand, React Native provides the following key features:
- Native iOS Components
- Asynchronous Execution
- Touch Handling
"Lightweight" is the primary reason why developers consider RactiveJS over the competitors, whereas "Learn once write everywhere" was stated as the key factor in picking React Native.
RactiveJS and React Native are both open source tools. It seems that React Native with 78.8K GitHub stars and 17.6K forks on GitHub has more adoption than RactiveJS with 5.67K GitHub stars and 440 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, React Native has a broader approval, being mentioned in 719 company stacks & 809 developers stacks; compared to RactiveJS, which is listed in 5 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.