react-native/docs/Basics-Component-View.md

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A View is the most basic building block for a React Native application. The View is an abstraction on top of the target platform's native equivalent, such as iOS's UIView.

A View is analogous to using a div for building websites.

While basic components such as Text and Image, can be displayed without a View, this is not generally recommended since the View gives you the control for styling and layout of those components.

This example creates a View that aligns the string Hello in the top center of the device, something which could not be done with a Text component alone (i.e., a Text component without a View would place the string in a fixed location in the upper corner):

import React from 'react';
import { AppRegistry, Text, View } from 'react-native';

const App = () => {
  return (
    <View style={{alignItems: 'center'}}>
      <Text>Hello!</Text>
    </View>
  );
}

// App registration and rendering
AppRegistry.registerComponent('MyApp', () => App);