Architecting Scalable React Native Apps

Introduction and Vision - Part 1

Restructuring a React Native application is more than just a technical exercise, it's an opportunity to breathe new life into your codebase, enhance developer productivity, and deliver a superior user experience. As applications grow in complexity, maintaining a clean, scalable, and modular architecture becomes essential to keep pace with evolving business needs and innovation.

In this series, we explore the journey of transforming a mobile app frontend into a well-organized, modular platform. Our goal is to empower developers with clear guidelines and practical strategies that simplify collaboration, improve maintainability, and optimize performance. Whether you’re tackling a legacy codebase or building a new app from scratch, these insights will help you lay a robust foundation for sustainable growth and continuous improvement.

Join us as we dive into the vision, delivery phases, component and module structure guidelines, and design patterns that drive the Avios app’s frontend evolution. Together, we'll uncover best practices and actionable steps to make your React Native application more resilient, scalable, and enjoyable to work with.

Vision

Our vision is to transform the mobile app into a modular platform that enhances developer experience and fosters innovation. By restructuring the app, we aim to improve maintainability, scalability, and performance, enabling easier collaboration and efficient feature development while delivering a more robust and user-friendly application.

The Why

As a developer, navigating the app can be quite challenging. It is often unclear which parts of the code correspond to specific sections of the application, making modification, debugging, testing, and scaling difficult. This uncertainty can lead to code duplication and a reluctance to refactor, as developers may fear that introducing new functionality could disrupt existing features or negatively impact performance.

What Will Be Achieved from Restructuring the App

1. Improved Maintainability: Modular architecture makes it easier to manage and update individual components without affecting the entire application. This can lead to cleaner code and reduced complexity.
2. Clearer Structure: A modular approach provides a clear organisation of the codebase, making it easier for new developers to understand the app's architecture and functionality.
3. Testing: Modules can be tested independently, making it easier to identify and fix bugs. This leads to a more reliable application overall.
4. Scalability: As the app grows, a modular structure allows for easier scaling. You can add new features or modules without disrupting existing functionality.
5. Collaboration: In a team environment, modular code allows multiple developers to work on different parts of the app simultaneously, improving productivity and collaboration.
6. Performance Optimisation: By isolating functionalities into modules, we can optimise performance for specific parts of your app, potentially improving load times and responsiveness.
7. Reusability: Adopting a modular structure allows us to share components across the app, minimising redundancy and reducing development time.

Objective

To create a more robust, efficient, and user-friendly application that supports ongoing innovation and development.

Constraints, Assumptions, and Decisions

When restructuring a React Native application, clearly defining constraints, assumptions, and decisions is crucial for guiding the process and ensuring alignment across the team.

• Constraints identify the limitations and boundaries within which the restructuring must occur, such as existing technical debt, platform requirements, or resource availability. Recognizing these helps set realistic expectations and prevents scope creep.
• Assumptions are the conditions believed to be true during planning, like anticipated user behavior or team skill sets. Documenting these ensures transparency and helps in assessing risks if assumptions change.
• Decisions capture the key architectural and design choices made throughout the restructuring, providing a reference that justifies the direction taken and aids future maintenance.

Together, this framework creates a foundation for informed planning, clear communication, and effective execution during the app’s transformation.

Example Constraints

• The app must remain compatible with both iOS and Android platforms.
• Existing third-party libraries and dependencies must be preserved unless a suitable alternative is found.
• The restructuring must not introduce significant performance regressions.

Example Assumptions

• The team has sufficient expertise in React Native and modular architecture principles.
• Users will benefit from a more intuitive navigation experience.

Example Decisions

• Adopt a modular architecture to enhance maintainability and scalability.
• Implement a component library to standardize UI elements and improve consistency across the app.

Open Questions

Open questions are unresolved issues or uncertainties that arise during the initial stages of restructuring a React Native app. Documenting these questions is essential because they highlight areas that require further investigation, discussion, or decision-making.

Addressing open questions early helps prevent misunderstandings, reduces risks, and ensures that the restructuring process is based on well-informed choices. It also facilitates collaboration by inviting input from stakeholders and team members, ensuring that critical concerns are not overlooked.

By maintaining a clear list of open questions, the team can prioritize problem-solving efforts and adapt the restructuring plan as new information becomes available, ultimately leading to a more robust and successful app transformation.

Example Open Questions

• How can we deliver the app restructure incrementally?
• What are the risks associated with the app restructure?
• What metrics can we track to monitor the impact of the app restructuring?
• What documentation process should we use?
• How can we share insights and knowledge of the restructuring process to ensure the whole team can take learnings from the process?
• How can we make sure this structure works well for testing (unit and automation)?
• Can we use linting to ensure new or updated code adheres to the new proposed structure?

Actions

The Actions section outlines the specific steps and strategies that will be explored throughout this article series to restructure the React Native app. These actions represent the practical approaches, techniques, and best practices that guide the transformation process.

By clearly defining these actions upfront, readers gain a roadmap of what to expect, enabling them to follow along systematically and understand how each step contributes to the overall goal. This section serves as a foundation for the detailed exploration and implementation guidance provided in the subsequent parts of the series.

Example Actions

• Define the delivery phases for the app restructure, breaking down the process into manageable stages that allow for incremental improvements and testing.
• Establish a clear component and module structure that promotes modularity, reusability, and maintainability.
• Identify and document design patterns that will be used throughout the app to ensure consistency and best practices in development.
• Assess the application to identify components most in need of restructuring (e.g., those causing performance issues or that are heavily used).
• Prioritise components based on their impact on the application and the effort required to restructure them, focusing on high-impact, low-effort tasks first.

Series

This article is part 3 of the series on restructuring a React Native application frontend.

• Part 1: Introduction and Vision
• Part 2: Delivery Phases
• Part 3: Component Structure Guidelines
• Part 4: Module Structure Guidelines - Coming Soon
• Part 5: Design Patterns - Coming Soon