Thumb rule while picking a third-party react native library for your project

Hello there!
I’m back again!
Thank you for your positive response to my earlier story.
If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s about some fascinating offbeat react-native libraries that you should look into.
Link: https://medium.com/@surajmdurgad/off-beat-libraries-for-react-native-e44a405466

Today, I’ll try to point out things to keep in mind while we are trying to pick a react-native library. These rules applies to any third-party libraries, for that matter.

Let’s take the example of react-native-reanimated.

Stars on the library, Used by and Contributors

The very first thing I look at when I stumble upon a library is the number of stars it has received, Used by and Contributors. It essentially represents the number of users who are following, utilizing, and contributing to the library. The higher these three are, the better.

The latest release date

This indicates whether or not a library is being maintained. You don’t want to rely on a library that is not maintained.

Minimum supported iOS and Android versions

Clone the repo.

Android: For this, you need to navigate to build.gradle file in android folder and look for minSdkVersion and verify it with you apps minSdkVersion; it should be either less than or equal to your app’s minSdkVersion

iOS: Open the project in Xcode.
Project > General > Deployment Info to get the minimum supported iOS version.

If you were lucky, the library’s author would have stated it in the readme on GitHub. Check that it supports the minimum supported versions of your app.

Number of open issues on the library

This indicates whether or not the library has an active community that is looking into issues with open source projects. Lesser the better.

If all of the above indicators are positive, we can consider proceeding with that library.

Let me know if there are any other indicators you use while picking a library.

I hope this helps other developers!

Follow me on any platform at @surajmdurgad.

Please let me know if it was helpful.

Until the next time! 👋🏻

Cheers! 🍻