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In one of our projects we are using Salesforce Health Cloud and want to build a mobile app for patients. We mainly have two requirements -

  1. All the patient data will be stored in the Health Cloud
  2. The mobile app will integrate with Health Cloud and will have offline data storage and syncing capability

Our client has specifically asked us to use React Native mainly because it is faster and results in better user experience for the end user. We also need to use the Salesforce Mobile SDK however, the problem is that the latest version of Salesforce Mobile SDK (7.1) uses React Native 0.56.1 which is almost a year old version of the library (the latest stable one being 0.59.0 released in March 2019).

The latest version of React Native has many improvements and we would like to use it but we are constrained by Salesforce Mobile SDK. We were thinking of getting rid of the Salesforce Mobile SDK and go with custom Salesforce Health Cloud integration instead.

I have two questions here -

  1. Can we expect the Salesforce Mobile SDK to support a fairly recent version of React Native anytime soon?
  2. Given the compatibility issues between Salesforce Mobile SDK and the latest version of React Native, do you recommend having custom integration with Health Cloud? would there be any issues with regards to security and compliance if we do so?

We would need some inputs on the path we should take here (Salesforce Mobile SDK vs Custom Health Cloud Integration) as that would decide the way forward.

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  • Check github. Looks like the Reactive Native SDK 7.2 with RN 0.59 is supposed to be released next month: github.com/forcedotcom/SalesforceMobileSDK-ReactNative/issues/…
    – xn.
    Commented Jun 10, 2019 at 18:56
  • @xn - Thanks for the information. However, the issue is will they keep the Salesforce Mobile SDK compatible with a fairly recent version of React Native library. Currently, there seems to be a large gap between the latest React Native release and the one supported by Salesforce Mobile SDK (mobile SDK supports a year old version of React Native) which in many cases might not be useful. I have posted the comment on the issue. Thanks for the help again.
    – Prasad
    Commented Jun 11, 2019 at 6:50

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Can we expect the Salesforce Mobile SDK to support a fairly recent version of React Native anytime soon?

We don't know. Until/unless we see something in the release notes, we can make no assumptions about supporting a newer React version. You might ask this question of salesforce.com directly, but Support probably doesn't know any more than we do.

Given the compatibility issues between Salesforce Mobile SDK and the latest version of React Native, do you recommend having custom integration with Health Cloud?

Sure. The Salesforce REST API is perfectly capable of doing anything you can do in the SDK. The point of the SDK is to reduce time to market for an app, but there's nothing inherently less secure about writing your own logic, so long as you follow the basic rules of security. You might want to read the SDK's source code to see how they implemented security features as you go along, but it's pretty easy to make a secure app with Salesforce.

would there be any issues with regards to security and compliance if we do so?

The SDK is not a requirement for security or compliance. If you're going for a security review, I'd expect it to probably take longer since there's more custom code, but there shouldn't be any reason why you couldn't build an app secure enough to pass a security review.

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