react-native-data-detector

Cross-platform text data detection for React Native. Uses NSDataDetector on iOS and ML Kit Entity Extraction on Android to detect phone numbers, URLs, emails, dates, and addresses — returning structured results to JavaScript.

Features

• Phone numbers — Detect and extract phone numbers
• URLs — Detect web links
• Emails — Detect email addresses
• Addresses — Detect street addresses with parsed components (iOS)
• Dates — Detect dates and times with ISO 8601 output
• Native accuracy — Uses battle-tested platform APIs instead of regex
• Expo Modules API — Built with the modern Expo native module system

Installation

npm install @themobilefirstcompany/react-native-data-detector

iOS

npx pod-install

Android

The ML Kit entity extraction model (~5.6MB) is downloaded on the user's device at runtime. You can control when this happens using downloadModel() — for example, calling it at app startup to ensure detect() works offline later. If you don't call it explicitly, the model will be downloaded automatically on the first detect() call.

Usage

import { detect, downloadModel } from '@themobilefirstcompany/react-native-data-detector';

// Pre-download the ML Kit model at app startup (Android only, no-op on iOS)
await downloadModel();

// Detect all entity types
const entities = await detect('Call me at 555-1234 or email john@example.com');
// [
//   { type: 'phoneNumber', text: '555-1234', start: 14, end: 22, data: { phoneNumber: '555-1234' } },
//   { type: 'email', text: 'john@example.com', start: 32, end: 48, data: { email: 'john@example.com' } }
// ]

// Detect only specific types
const phones = await detect('Call 555-1234 or visit https://example.com', {
  types: ['phoneNumber'],
});
// [
//   { type: 'phoneNumber', text: '555-1234', start: 5, end: 13, data: { phoneNumber: '555-1234' } }
// ]

API

downloadModel()

Pre-downloads the ML Kit entity extraction model on Android. On iOS, this is a no-op that resolves immediately — NSDataDetector is built into the OS and requires no model download.

Call this at app startup or before the first detect() call to ensure the model is available offline.

Returns: Promise<boolean> — true when the model is ready.

Platform	Behavior
iOS	No-op, resolves true immediately
Android	Downloads the ML Kit model (~5.6MB) if not already cached. Requires internet on first call.

detect(text, options?)

Detects entities in the given text using native platform APIs.

Parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
text	string	The text to analyze
options	DetectOptions	Optional configuration

DetectOptions:

Property	Type	Default	Description
types	DetectionType[]	All types	Which entity types to detect

DetectionType: 'phoneNumber' | 'link' | 'email' | 'address' | 'date'

Returns: Promise<DetectedEntity[]>

DetectedEntity

Property	Type	Description
type	DetectionType	The type of detected entity
text	string	The matched text substring
start	number	Start index in the original string
end	number	End index (exclusive) in the original string
data	Record<string, string>	Additional structured data (see below)

Entity Data by Type

Type	Data fields
phoneNumber	{ phoneNumber }
link	{ url }
email	{ email }
address	{ street, city, state, zip, country } (iOS) / { address } (Android)
date	{ date } ISO 8601 string

Platform Differences

Feature	iOS	Android
Engine	NSDataDetector	ML Kit Entity Extraction
Offline	Always	After downloadModel() or first detect() call
Model download	Not needed	~5.6MB, on-device at runtime
Address parsing	Structured components	Raw string
Date output	ISO 8601	ISO 8601

Requirements

• iOS 15.1+
• Android API 24+ (minSdk)
• Expo SDK 50+ or bare React Native with expo-modules-core

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

MIT