Renaming React Native Apps
5/10/2017
I am recently getting into the React framework (let's be real, it's barely a library) and using React Native. I'm not interested in starting flame wars, before this I thoroughly enjoyed using Angular and Ionic. React does seem to be easier to get up and running, and it seems to suit my thinking a lot better as well.
While noobing through the various tutorials and blogs for React Native, I decided to increase the scope of my practice app and I felt that a renaming was in order. Changing the class name is fine, and the only other changes that came to mind were the name attribute in app.json and the first argument in the registerComponent function in the app itself.
If you then try to run react-native run-ios or android you'll get an alarming red error message on the simulator. Yikes! You'll quickly observe that the app being loaded has the old name and a quick ls in the android and ios folders will make it even more obvious. The fix is easy:
- Delete the android and ios folders
- Run
react-native eject
The eject command recreates the native folders for you, using what's in app.json to define the project.
Next time you run you should have your app with its new name on the simulator without problems, assuming your other bits of code are fine.
Happy hacking!