Feature: support drawer navigation

[chirag04]

No description provided.

[lelandrichardson]

This probably won't be something that we will add support for ourselves because we aren't using it in any way. I would, however, support contributions adding support for it in the default implementation if the API makes sense.

If you're interested in doing this, let's chat about what the API could look like and how it could work...

[pie6k]

I dont like how 'navigation market' granulates, especially when I hear from big players like airbnb that they'll not add something as they done need it for theirselves. I like that you've open-sourced great project, but with great size comes great responsibility. It has like 1k stars in 2 or 3 days and lack of some kind of standard api in react-native ecosystem is pain in the ass.

It feels a bit like:

[lelandrichardson]

@timpler As I mentioned in my comment above, I'm not opposed to having an API in the library for drawer layout (though I haven't thought much about what it would look like or how it would fit in), but at the moment I am viewing it as something that would need to be contributed back, preferably by someone who is actually using it and has actual real world use cases.

As Ben Alpert mentioned at the React Native panel last Thursday, React Native itself takes the same exact approach - with modules that Facebook does not use themselves being contributed by the community. If we don't have real use cases for them, we can't make informed decisions on how they should be added, and also don't have the proper context when taking on maintenance of that module.

We are working hard to make this library something that can be useful for people beyond just Airbnb, but within reason. The Drawer layout does not have a clear semantically equivalent partner on the iOS platform, but the BottomNavigationMenu does, and thus it was chosen to be used. That's not to say that drawer layout isn't an important ui component for the android platform, but it might mean that it does not need to be part of this library, and could work as a standalone module outside of this library and interop just fine.

[ferrannp]

and could work as a standalone module outside of this library and interop just fine.

That sounds great to me, actually, I think it should be the way to go: To separate actual navigation from patterns like a drawer. Indeed, a drawer is a very used pattern in Android but it doesn't mean that all your apps need or should have one.

For me, the main pain point of all the navigation libraries out there is that the navigation on Android doesn't feel the way it should in terms of performance and animation. Here is a clever way to solve it using Fragments (as mentioned in the React conference, taking advantage of the Native solution is just fine).

I think this should be the main focus right now, there is gonna be time to bloat it with a Drawer, TopTabs, etc, etc.

[egorkhmelev]

Has anyone made any attempt to it? If so, I'd like to contribute, if not, I'd love to chat about possible API and implementation as I have an app which requires this to migrate to react-native.