Discover How Proximity Services Power Apps Like Uber EfficientlyDiscover How Proximity Services Power Apps Like Uber Efficiently
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
Abhishek's avatar
Abhishek Kumar
• May 6
How does an app like Uber know exactly which driver is 2 minutes away from you, even in a city with thousands of cars? 🚕💨
It seems like magic, but it’s actually a brilliant piece of backend engineering. If you are a business owner looking to build a high-performance app, understanding this "Proximity Service" is the key to a seamless user experience. 🛠️✨
Here is the "Easy Version" of how it works:
THE WORLD AS A GIANT SOCCER BALL (H3 INDEXING) ⚽🌍 Instead of tracking every driver by complicated GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude), we divide the entire world into a grid of HEXAGONS.
WHY HEXAGONS? Unlike squares, every neighbor of a hexagon is the same distance from the center. 📐
THE BENEFIT: It makes the math for "Who is nearby?" incredibly fast. Every car is simply assigned to a "Hexagon ID." 🆔
THE "PING" AND THE "FAST FILE" (REAL-TIME UPDATES) 📡⚡ Every few seconds, a driver's phone sends a "Ping" to the server.
We use a high-speed storage system (like REDIS) to keep a "Live Map" of which drivers are in which hexagons. 🏎️💨
Because this system is built for speed, it can handle millions of updates every second without the app ever lagging. 📉✅
THE SEARCH: FINDING THE NEIGHBORS 🔍📍 When a rider opens their app, the backend doesn't search the whole city. It only looks at:
Your Hexagon.
The Hexagons directly touching yours. In milliseconds, the system filters for "Available" drivers in those specific spots and shows them on your screen. That is why the cars appear instantly! ⏱️🔥
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR YOUR BUSINESS 💼🚀 Whether you are building a delivery app, a service marketplace, or a logistics platform, SPEED is your best feature. If your backend is slow, your users will leave. A custom-built system using REACT and NESTJS ensures that your app stays lightning-fast even as you grow from 10 users to 10,000. 📈🌟
🚀 WANT TO BUILD A HIGH-PERFORMANCE APP LIKE THIS? I specialize in architecting scalable backends and smooth frontends that handle the heavy lifting while your users enjoy a "magical" experience.
DM me "APP" to discuss your project and get a technical roadmap today! 📩🤝
#SystemDesign #AppDevelopment #TechExplained #FounderTips #FullStack #NestJS #React #Scalability #SoftwareEngineering #UberTech
Node.jsPostgreSQL
Post image
Back to feed
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started