How Uber has Scaled Its Business with Node.js?

Uber has redefined how we travel with its on-demand cab platform. However, that is not the only thing that has transformed ever since Uber came into existence. On-demand revolutionized customer behaviour and how we perceived convenience. From food delivery to our laundry to the fitness solutions, everything has become on-demand. Uber is continuously evolving and entering into new segments. This requires the foundation of a strong and reliable technology, which is possible with Node.js.

What Uber needs is a strong and reliable system that can help the company offer a seamless experience. For the on-demand cab service, it has appointed the matching system, which allows the drivers to be matched with the customers. The system is scaling with the increase in the number of drivers as well as customers, and to ensure reliable scaling without hindrance in the experience offered by the company, Uber has shifted to Node.js.

Node.js Mobile App Services has ably understood the scalability and flexibility needs posed by the startup and has setup the technology infrastructure to combat it.

Let’s look at why Uber shifted gears towards Node.js.

The Need to Implement Node.js

Every six months or so, Uber doubles the number of drivers and customers. The company holds its presence in about 68 countries across 6 continents and has drivers operational in over 300 cities. Imagine the level of processing the matching system has to go through on a daily basis. With millions of rides ongoing on a regular day, the matching system has to be equally efficient and should not face any downtime.

Node.js has strengths that help in achieving this target

• The framework handles asynchronous I/O requests using a non-blocking and single-threaded event loop. This works when you need to handle network requests made by distributed systems
• js offers quick iteration. When it comes to handling errors, this platform is the perfect one. It can easily address the errors without restarting the application. You can even deploy new code, without hampering the existing system or code
• The framework has an excellent community support, which helps you if you are stuck at some place, and also helps with innovating the existing system.

How Uber Benefited with Node.js?

• There is a lot of information that needs to be processed in real-time when you are working on an on-demand system.
  • When Uber’s matching system gets an incoming supply notification, which is millions in number, the matching system does not direct the message to the driver directly. Instead, the ride request is sent over a network, which is then captured by the geospatial database and stored there.
  • The active drivers in the nearby locations are updated with the ride request. Every request is important and needs to be closed in real-time. Now, the speed at which these requests come and go can be calculated in microseconds or even smaller time denomination.
  • js works well when it comes to writing systems that work in the memory state. Being distributed, it is available all the time and responds to the requests quickly. It eliminates the need to read/write or even serialize the state of the database. The best part being it can handle massive requests, scaling itself to meet the needs
• As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to restart an application to make the necessary changes or eliminate the errors. The Read Eval Print Loop allows the developers to initiate new code into the system, check for errors without preventing the existing processes from occurring.
  • You can inspect the code changes and other program details without restarting the application
  • This allows the developers to be both creative and adaptive and creates a culture of productivity within the organization
  • Your work gets done immediately and you are ready to deploy it as soon as you are done. You get more time to think innovative and create solutions to the problems
• The framework is getting better with time. There are more people than you can imagine, working on making the framework adaptive to your growing needs. Uber has unleashed the full potential of the framework and has initiated its use across every interaction layer

Conclusion
The basic need for Uber was to scale the systems quickly to manage the demand and supply. Node.js made it possible with its I/O management capabilities and its immediate response to any requests.

If you have an application that requires immediate responses or works in real-time, then connect with us. We have a dedicated team of Node.js app development experts to help you with possible real-time and high-performance solutions for your idea.