Interview with Li Yi on Building 58 Group’s Large Front‑End Technology Service System

InfoQ interviewed Li Yi, the leader of 58 Group’s Front‑End Technology Department, to discuss the architecture and evolution of the company’s large‑scale front‑end service system.

The system is composed of three main parts: a Hybrid permission management system, the 58 React Native hot‑update platform, and the Beidou front‑end monitoring system. The React Native platform supports continuous integration for React Native projects and is being extended to Flutter, while Beidou provides real‑time monitoring across H5, React Native, mini‑programs, and native stacks.

Building the platform involved creating a group‑wide CI capability, standardizing onboarding solutions, enriching the toolchain, and establishing a full‑process ecosystem that covers standardized access, rich development tools, and comprehensive CI pipelines.

Beidou aggregates logs using Elasticsearch and Druid, enabling second‑level multidimensional analysis on billions of log entries. It consolidates logging channels across different tech stacks, facilitating rapid anomaly detection, root‑cause analysis, and cross‑team visibility.

58’s cross‑platform strategy includes Hybrid, Flutter, React Native, and Taro. Hybrid remains valuable for H5 scenarios, Taro excels in multi‑platform mini‑program reuse, while Flutter and React Native are compared: Flutter offers a complete UI layer with potentially better performance, whereas React Native provides mature dynamic updates and a first‑mover advantage.

Li Yi shared lessons from six years of React Native usage, highlighting challenges in experience consistency, the need for a custom high‑performance component library, separating rendering and layout threads, and bridging gaps between web and native APIs. He also described the evolution of a unified logging and monitoring system that simplifies troubleshooting.

Regarding low‑code, Li Yi sees it as a natural progression after stabilizing core infrastructure, enabling rapid development for non‑technical users and boosting productivity through automated, dynamic solutions.

He concluded that the core challenge for cross‑platform development is continuously smoothing differences among platforms, akin to W3C’s role in standardizing web technologies, and advised newcomers to solidify front‑end fundamentals while gaining exposure to adjacent domains.