Can SafeAreaView be a function of View?

[TheRohitSharma]

Introduction

When I imported SafeAreaView it right next to my import for View, it made me wonder why the former can't be absorbed into the latter.

Details

Having to only import the View component and possibly just pass it a prop like safeArea would make things just a bit simpler, and we'd only have to import the View component that we're likely already using vs. juggling both. I have a feeling this has already been discussed/considered, but I couldn't find anything by searching.

Discussion points

• is there a known reason the function of SafeAreaView couldn't simply exist as a prop on View?
• Are there benefits to the two components being separate?

P.S. Been a React Native lover for a few years now, but it's my first time here, so hi 👋

[kelset]

I think it's not as straightforward, maybe try opening a PR against the main repo to propose how you'd achieve that?

[brentvatne]

1. you probably shouldn't use SafeAreaView from react-native core, react-native-safe-area-context is a better maintained alternative that provides the same functionality, is more flexible (has a programmatic api for accessing safe areas), and works on iOS, Android, and web.
2. react-native core is becoming smaller and smaller because, among other reasons, APIs that are part of core can't be changed very easily/quickly and improvements take a long time to propagate to all users. updating the version of react-native in your app in order to get a small fix to an api that it bundles often isn't desirable, compared to just bumping the version of the api that you're using. it could take several months for a small fix you're depending on to be available in a stable react-native release. before react-native-safea-area-context existed, the author attempted to upstream it in this PR, to give you an idea of how difficult it can be to make significant changes in core. if this had landed at that time, the API would have continued to evolve much more slowly because releases would be constrained to the react-native release cycle, so it ended up being for the best.
3. if react-native-safe-area-context and cross-platform safe area apis become very stable, we might want to consider bringing the api into core. it may make sense for that to be via a prop on View, but those design decisions can be made once the underlying apis are rock solid. while this API lives outside of core, it's best for it to also live on its own component rather than attempting to monkeypatch view props or something like that.
4. i think this same sort of discussion can be had about a variety of other functionality: why doesn't View support gradients directly? what about masking? etc. these are certainly reasonable questions, and perhaps at some point View will maybe support some of these. every time we add some new behaviour to the core View component we increase the surface area for what a new platform (eg: react-native-windows) needs to support in order to implement the core of react-native, and we need to be conscious of this. everything has a tradeoff