React Native Adoption at Traveloka
Article Summary
Jacky Wijaya from Traveloka reveals how React Native helped them ship 80% shared code across platforms while building everything from bill payments to B2B partner apps. The results? Smaller teams, faster launches, and a complete rethink of mobile development.
In late 2016, Traveloka's engineering team took a serious look at React Native as an alternative to pure native development. This detailed case study walks through their real-world experience adopting the framework across consumer and B2B products, including specific products like Trip Reminder, Vacation, and multiple bill payment features.
Key Takeaways
- Achieved 80% code sharing across iOS and Android platforms
- Built entire B2B apps (TERA, AXES) with minimal resources using React Native
- OTA updates via CodePush enabled instant critical bug fixes without app store approval
- App size increased by 8MB on Android after optimization (down from initial 15MB)
- Created new React Native engineering role with cross platform expectations
Traveloka successfully scaled React Native from experimental adoption to production use across consumer features and complete B2B apps, saving significant development time despite tradeoffs in app size and platform expertise requirements.
About This Article
Traveloka's engineers spent a lot of time managing dependencies. React Native released new versions every month, which meant the team had to upgrade their platform and check compatibility across their codebase regularly.
Traveloka created a structured upgrade workflow and set up an infrastructure team. This team focused on platform-specific integration issues like push notifications that can't be handled with JavaScript alone.
With the infrastructure team in place, Traveloka delivered consistent app experiences on both iOS and Android. Engineers spent less time debugging native platform issues and dealing with integration problems.