Android Library Project with React Native

Question

I'm currently struggling a bit with react native. What I want to have is a library project based on react native which I can then include in some of my apps.

First thing I tried was to move all the basic react setup code [1] into a Fragment inside an existing app. This worked without any problems.

Then I started a completely new Android project with an empty Activity. Into this project I added a new Android Library project module which should contain the "react native fragment". I initialised the react native project in my root project folder then.

My current project structure looks like this:

ReactApplication
- basic files (index.android.js, index.ios.js, package.json, build.gradle, settings.gradle)
- app/ (contains the real native android app which includes the "react native fragment")
- reactlib/ (library project which contains a fragment with the code from [1])
- ios/
- node_modules/ (contains react-native)

Starting the dev-server via npm start works without any problems but as soon as I start the Android app I get the folowwing logcat outputs:

W/unknown:React(26957): Unable to dispatch keyboard events in JS as the react instance has not been attached
W/unknown:React(26957): You seem to be running on device. Run 'adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081' to forward the debug server's port to the device.
E/(26957): Unable to load script from assets: index.android.bundle
E/ReactNative(26957): Got JS Exception: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: require

Please note that I did the adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081 thing and the error is still showing up.

Later I want to create an aar out of the Android Library project and access it via maven.

What am I doing wrong? Or is what I want to do simply not possible?

[1] https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/embedded-app-android.html#add-native-code

Answer 1

After debugging and trying out couple of things, i figured that it fails to load the bundle file from server when bundled in aar.

If you add index.android.bundle in android assets folder, it starts working.