If you have the necessary blend of infrastructure, resources, accessibility, and technology, you indeed can offer a thriving on-demand service. Additionally, if you can enhance the standard of an existing service, you have the potential to be the next Uber. But developing an app like Uber isn’t easy, it requires frictionless access, a great experience for both riders and drivers and a lot more. Wondering how Uber successfully did it? Let’s dig in
The technology stacks and goes to market strategy of Uber
Uber made its official launch in the year 2010 and six-month later they earned around 6000 users and over 20,000 rides. To kick start its services, Ubers had to attract both customers and drivers simultaneously and it called for the need for several tools and programming languages in the engineering of their application. Uber approached go-to-market strategy to encourage new riders to try their service by offering great discounts on the first ride. It worked, as Uber could successfully transform new riders into loyal customers.
Uber’s tech stack is a constantly evolving one and they have introduced several new technologies that proved to be efficient in certain areas. An Uber clone script will help you to bring the same functionalities like Uber to your app, too. With that said, Node.js is one of the crucial cogs in Uber’s operations as it enables scaling up along with the rising demand for their services.
To meet the considerable challenge of offering a reliable user experience for its riders and drivers at a rapidly growing scale, Uber has built its massive on-demand system on Node.js.
Uber is expanding double in size every 6 months with the need to process millions of ride every day across 6 continents and 68 countries. Uber needs a system that will keep working no matter what and that is why the engineering team at Uber has chosen Node.js. If you are thinking about how to make an app like Uber, focus on the tech stack uber followed for its grandeur success.
Why Node.js
Node.js is an open-source server-side run time environment created for building fast and scalable network applications. Built on Google chrome’s Javascript V8 engine, it is a light and fast way to execute code on our computer.
There are following are major strengths that make node.js a great choice for Uber.
- Node.js manages asynchronous I/O requests using a single-threaded and non-blocking event loop. Though a single-threaded framework, it supports concurrency through events and call-back, making the system best suited for distributed systems that expect plenty of requests.
For example, consider the following code.
Here, the file will be read first and then console.log() executes.
Now consider this piece of code.
The output will be as follows.
Here the console.log() will be executed first and then file content. This is because the code is asynchronous and event lop executes that later.
- Generally, Node.js is good for quick iterations. Programs can be checked for errors and can be addressed easily without the need for a restart. This enables developers to publish and new code consistently.
- The open-source nature of node.js facilitates code sharing among expert programmers. The open-source community constantly optimizes the technology, which means it updated all the time.
How Uber works: Understanding the technology behind on-demand taxi service
Let’s briefly talk about how Uber function. First, you request for a ride to a particular location to Uber. Uber then asks for your pickup location and drop location. Next, Uber locates a driver and tell you when he will arrive to take you to your destination. Once the ride is finished, Uber asks for the payment and feedback. You will be asked to rate your trip and pay for it. Every on-demand taxi solution needs a powerful technology stack to operate under in the following categories.
Geolocation
Uber is popularly known as a location-based startup. That said, geolocation is one of the top features of Uber. Not just uber, all taxi booking apps rely on geolocation features for the following.
From identifying a device’s location to providing driving directions, on-demand services can’t function without location technology. Geolocation indeed is the most important technology in Uber’s tech stack.
Notifications
Uber sends notifications to both riders and drivers through various mediums like Push notifications services, email, and SMS. Both text notifications and push notifications are required as the latter doesn’t work if the devices go offline.
Inter-app communication
In on-demand services like Uber, both driver and rider apps need to communicate with each other without any interruption. Most of the communications happen on the cloud and a customer can still book a taxi even if he goes offline after booking.
However, the driver must be online all the time as the rider app tracks the location of the driver all the time. Inter-app communications take place over mobile data or Wi-Fi. The data exchange is mostly routed over the app server and the data can be encrypted as well.
Payment
Even though on-demand taxi services insist on a cashless payment system, these services have started to include cash payments. This is because Uber’s services are targeted towards geography where cashless payments are still in the infant stages.
Payment gateway integration is another important functionality required by apps like Uber to process payments. BrainTree and Stripe are some of the best payment systems in the market to accept card payments. Braintree is one of the leaders in the industry and boasts Uber as one of its clients. Split fare is another interesting feature offered by solutions like BrainTree and Stripe.
These are the basic and essential features of Uber but you can also add other unique functionalities as well if you want to know how to make an app like Uber to enjoy the same success.
Strengths of Node.js behind the success of Uber
Not just Uber, Node.js is used by large enterprises like Paypal, Netflix, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Groupon, Mozilla, etc. Why did they choose node.js to power their business? Node.js enables to build quality applications, deploy new features quickly, and write unit and integration tests easily. But the strengths of node.js don’t end there. Here are some of the other reasons why big companies are using node.js.
Processes lots of information quickly
Uber’s matching system handles a huge amount of demand requests from riders and supply notifications from drivers. These requests arrive at varying speeds, thanks to the Internet connection speed, but every request has to be treated on a priority. Remember, Uber-like app’s goal is to be running quickly and continuously regardless of the situation. Matching riders with drivers is the mission-critical system for Uber. If this breaks, Uber doesn’t have a business.
Luckily, these are the types of issues Node.js is built to tackle. Node.js is particularly best suited to writing systems that have all their state in memory. They don’t have to externalize the concerns of distributed systems. As a result, the systems can be more available and can respond much quicker to requests by eliminating the reading and writing into a database.
Promoting a creative and productive engineering culture
This is another area where the strength of Node.js comes into play. Using an interactive testing environment called Read Eval Print Loop( REPL), Javascript allows developers to deploy new code and fix the errors without having to stop any process. One of the best features that make Node.js perfect for apps like uber is that you can check and alter a program without having to restart it.
Very few other programming languages offer such capability. This creates a unique culture of productivity insider Uber’s tech team. If you want to build an app like Uber with the same features and functionalities, an Uber clone script comes as an easy solution.
You are never going it alone
That is the next major strength of Node.js. Belonging to the open-source community, tackling problems of any sort is easy. Node.js is not without any business, memory leaks are one of the most prevalent problems that can rapidly degrade performance. However, there are ways to cope up with memory leaks. With node.js, Uber engineers get assistance and help from experts and solve the problem whenever they popup without the system failing.
Take Away
If you have already got a unique on-demand business idea like Uber and want to start your business, what you really need is great planning and execution. When it comes to offering on-demand services, few companies are more widely recognized like Uber. Definitely tech stack is one of the significant factors that contribute to the flawless functioning of the app. Considering its benefits, Node. js has become a standard for large scale apps to power their business. When it’s been offering powerful frameworks and libraries to create a modern and interactive interface, it is hard to escape its gravitational pull. Why not use Node.js to improve performance and coding efficiency for your business?