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urlreact-nativeuriwebaddress

URI vs URL in React Native

In react-native one can do:

const somePath = 'https://...'
<Image source={somePath} />

or

const somePath = 'https://...'
<Image source={{uri: somePath}} />

From what I understand about web addresses is that URIs are a superset of URLs and URNs.

Questions

  1. What are the potential problems associated with supplying a web address to source as a URL?

  2. What are the potential problems associated with supplying a web address to source as a URI?

  3. Which method of supplying an address of an image to source is more accurate, safer, and future proof?

Solution

  • The first code example you provided won't work

    const somePath = 'https://...'
<Image source={somePath} />

    In general general you should use the source prop to provide a local image like so

    const someLocalImage = require("./assets/someImageName.png");
<Image source={someLocalImage} />

    and the uri to display a remote image like so

    <Image source={{uri: "https://example.com/someRemoteImagePath.png" />

    You can also use the uri to display base64 image data

    <Image
      source={{uri: 'data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADMAAAAzCAYAAAA6oTAqAAAAEXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBwbmdjcnVzaEB1SfMAAABQSURBVGje7dSxCQBACARB+2/ab8BEeQNhFi6WSYzYLYudDQYGBgYGBgYGBgYGBgYGBgZmcvDqYGBgmhivGQYGBgYGBgYGBgYGBgYGBgbmQw+P/eMrC5UTVAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg=='}}
    />

    Read more about it in the documentation

    https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/image.html#source