( Case study — 01 )
Google Navigation SDK
Bringing Google's turn-by-turn Navigation SDK to React Native — with no library to start from.
- Company
- D&S Inc.
- Role
- Software Engineer
- Period
- 2022 — Now
- Stack
The challenge
Our ride-hailing app needed real turn-by-turn navigation inside the React Native app. Google offers a Navigation SDK for native iOS and Android, but when I started there was no ready-to-go React Native library for it.
The approach
I built the integration from scratch. I took Google’s unreleased React Native library as a reference, then customised the native code for both iOS and Android to fit our app: bridging the SDK into React Native, exposing the map and navigation views as components, and wiring events back to JavaScript.
What I built
- A native module and view bridge for iOS and Android
- Navigation views usable as regular React Native components
- Event handling between the native SDK and the JavaScript app
- Performance work so navigation stays smooth on real devices
What I learned
It was challenging and, at times, frustrating — but it’s the project I enjoyed most. Working this close to native code deepened my understanding of how React Native really talks to each platform, and taught me patience with problems that have no Stack Overflow answer yet.