How can I run background tasks in React Native?

javascript ios react-native
liamzebedee picture liamzebedee · Feb 13, 2016 · Viewed 115.5k times · Source

I've built a little iOS app in React Native that does location tracking, sending the lat/lng regularly to a server of the user's choosing. However this only works when the app is in the foreground. How can I run this task in the background when the user is in other apps?

Answer

Daniel Schmidt picture Daniel Schmidt · May 17, 2016

Currently, there is, unfortunately, no support for background tasks of any kind. The feature you are referring to would be a background timer. Such a timer is this product pain (a feature request) for react native, you may upvote it to show an increased demand for this feature.

EDIT 12/2016: There is still no real option. You have the Headless JS API since RN 0.33, but it is only for android. Also your App will crash if this runs in the foreground so you have to be careful about using it. Thanks to @Feng for pointing that out.

Related questions

setTimeout in React Native

I'm trying to load a splash screen for an iOS app built in React Native. I'm trying to accomplish this through class states and then a setTimeout function as follows: class CowtanApp extends Component { constructor(props){ super(props); this.state = { …

Read More
React Native: Getting the position of an element

I am styling an Image component with flexbox to be in the center of the screen which works pretty well. Now I want a second Image component to be displayed directly on the top of the first one. The second …

Read More
Error Running React Native App From Terminal (iOS)

I am following the tutorial on the official React Native website. Using the following to build my project: react-native run-ios I get the error: Found Xcode project TestProject.xcodeproj xcrun: error: unable to find utility "instruments", not a developer tool …

Read More