Interview with Qunar Frontend Leaders on Nanachi: A Multi‑Platform Mini‑Program Framework

Qunar's front‑end team introduced Nanachi, an open‑source framework that simultaneously supports Quick Apps and various mini‑program platforms, addressing the gap left by existing solutions like Taro, Mpvue, and WePY which lack Quick App compatibility.

Nanachi offers several distinctive capabilities: intelligent WebView integration to reduce mini‑program bundle size, native support for Quick Apps, built‑in automatic linting, upload, and regression testing, which together streamline the development and quality‑assurance workflow.

The team chose to develop Nanachi in‑house rather than adopt other open‑source frameworks because Qunar's existing stack is based on React, making Vue‑centric solutions require extensive refactoring; moreover, they needed a framework tightly aligned with their business requirements.

For cross‑department collaboration, Qunar uses a tool called Chaika that aggregates independently developed modules from different business units into a single mini‑program, enabling one‑click publishing in under a minute. Modules are categorized as core, common, and business modules to promote reuse and flexibility.

Backend services follow a unified approach: a single set of backend APIs serves multiple front‑end platforms, with only login and payment logic varying per platform.

The engineers noted that, aside from WeChat, other mini‑program ecosystems are still immature, often plagued by bugs and limited documentation, making cross‑platform development challenging.

Team organization is centralized, with one team responsible for all platforms while business‑line specialists develop feature code. Configuration of home‑page modules is handled by a service named Qconfig, allowing dynamic enabling or disabling of channels without redeployment.

Regarding resilience, the multi‑WebView architecture ensures that a failure in one sub‑mini‑program does not affect others, and Qconfig can instantly deactivate problematic entry points, providing effective disaster recovery.

Looking ahead, Nanachi aims to broaden platform coverage, with ongoing negotiations to support platforms such as Toutiao and QQ mini‑programs, reinforcing Qunar's commitment to a unified, cross‑platform front‑end ecosystem.