This month I came across Expo Router, which makes it even to code cross-platform applications by having cleaner architecture.
For the last 5 months, I've been coding an app for a client using React Native, React Navigation, and Expo.
Now I feel like every developer reaches a point in their project when they find out about new updates and resources to either 1) completely stop everything to upgrade/update their code base or 2) keep treading along while still building on their working version and worry about updating later.
Whenever I come across this issue, I tend to lean towards number 1 more. Because I know in the long run it'll benefit me more. Why not opt to use something that is “better, faster, and easier”?
A caveat could be that there aren't many resources, guides, articles, or tutorials based on the new tech. You rely mostly on documentation and maybe reaching out to the developers to answer your questions.
And verbatim that's what I have been doing the last week. Porting over to using the Expo router file structure. The learning curve wasn't too bad being the structure is similar to Next.js App directory which I have been working on for the past few months.
Porting involves a lot of:
- Copying
- Pasting
- Renaming
You got to have a lot of patience when debugging.
And it's good to have an already working version to reference or revert back to if you get stuck. Best of luck!