Ctrip’s Mobile Engineering Practices: React Native, Wireless Network Service Architecture, and Android Plugin Refactoring

With the rapid growth of wireless services and development technologies, mobile apps have become the core channel for most internet companies, requiring continuous evolution of mobile application architecture; Ctrip has been leading in mobile development for over six years.

On August 27, 2017, the high‑impact tech network EGO organized a gathering of about 40 CTOs and technical directors in Shanghai to explore Ctrip’s practical wireless development experiences.

The event took place at Ctrip’s headquarters in the Lingkong SOHO complex, a landmark building designed by Zaha Hadid, featuring futuristic architecture and modern facilities.

Visitors toured the headquarters, viewing a historic timeline wall and a real‑time, dynamic order visualization system powered by Ctrip’s big‑data analytics, which displayed live order generation and regional popularity.

The tour also showcased employee amenities such as pool tables, treadmills, and massage chairs.

In the sharing session, senior R&D manager Zhao Xingui presented “React Native in Ctrip’s Engineering Practice,” describing how Ctrip started app development in 2011, introduced React Native in 2015 to address package size, H5 performance, and development efficiency, and began large‑scale adoption in 2017.

He explained common React Native challenges like oversized JS bundles and slow initial page loads, and introduced Ctrip’s custom CRN (Ctrip React Native) framework that separates framework code, pre‑executes JS in the background, and dramatically improves page‑load speed.

Zhao concluded with three key takeaways: (1) React Native’s performance and stability are proven at large scale, reducing development and maintenance costs; (2) the learning curve is steep but, once mastered, offers strong controllability; (3) large‑scale adoption benefits from a dedicated team to manage the framework and release pipeline.

Subsequently, senior wireless development director Chen Haoran shared “Ctrip Wireless Network Service Solution,” outlining the dual‑channel architecture (Native TCP‑based and Hybrid HTTP‑based) used in 2016, the role of Netty‑based TCP Gateway for connection management, routing, monitoring, security, and authentication.

He emphasized the necessity of a gateway to isolate over 20 business units’ service clusters, preventing cross‑unit interference and improving deployment efficiency.

Chen also presented the latest wireless service architecture diagram, showing how both Native and Hybrid requests ultimately flow through TCP connections, with Hybrid requests optionally wrapped as HTTP when needed, and highlighted the current request‑response model’s limitation in real‑time data push, proposing a future shift toward a server‑push model.

The event also featured Peng Changhu, Android chief architect from Weidian, who discussed “Weidian Android Plugin Architecture Refactoring Practice,” describing the multi‑year plugin migration effort that began in early 2016 and was largely completed by the end of that year.

The day concluded with a group photo of all participants.