React Native SDK Introduction

Latest Version

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Package Features

@petnow/react-native-camera-ui is a UI layer wrapper around the iOS/Android native camera SDK (CameraController + CameraView). It provides the camera preview, detection overlays (nose/face markers, progress ring), and attention sounds as-is.

• Hook-based API: usePetnowCamera({ apiKey }) returns a controller handle that owns the license and detection commands.
• Bare component: <CameraView camera={...} /> renders the native preview + overlay.
• Automatic single-hardware-session management: RN views are frequently destroyed and recreated by navigation, re-renders, and hot reloads, but the camera session is managed by the package as a singleton, so the view does not own it. After the last detach, the session is reused for a short grace period to reduce re-initialization cost. However, on Android only the most recently attached view has the preview, so there may be a brief gap where the previous/new view's preview is empty during a transition.

SDK Structure

Key Components

• usePetnowCamera({ apiKey, isDebugMode })
  • Returns a controller handle that holds the license and exposes detection commands.
  • Exposes the SDK readiness state via camera.state.
• <CameraView camera={camera} ... />
  • Binds to the controller and renders the native preview + detection overlay.
  • The camera is initialized on mount and cleaned up on unmount.

Technical Requirements

• React Native: 0.75 or higher + New Architecture (Fabric/TurboModules) enabled
• Android: minSdk 28 or higher. The host activity must be a PermissionAwareActivity (RN's default ReactActivity satisfies this — no separate FragmentActivity required)
• iOS: 16.0 or higher
• Petnow API key (if you don't have one, contact support@petnow.io)

Next Steps

• Getting Started — Installation and initial setup
• Basic Usage — hook + CameraView integration
• Customization — Layering UI on top of <CameraView>