Frontend Development and Codebase Update for an App That Enables Drone Management

Goal

The drones come with a slick web application that enables clients to manage all the drones they have. Recently, the company needed a trusted partner to help them update the application’s codebase. Major challenges involved:

• Replacing typo3, which is a server-side CMS system, with a client-side application capable of supporting any kind of logic on top of the new cluster of microservices.
• Finding a team that would be able to implement a modern application in either Vue or React with high-quality code and high unit test coverage to ensure long-term evolvability.
• Updating old user interfaces to match the current trends and the company’s visual identity.

Process

senseFly turned to Netguru to help them with finding and building a new frontend solution. The Netguru team has recently tested Vue.js, a progressive JavaScript framework, and it proved to be effective in building user interfaces. Therefore, the team recommended rewriting the senseFly app from typo3 to Vue.js. The process went as follows:

• A team of three reviewed potential alternative frameworks and decided to go with Vue.js, as it allows for creating multiple applications from the same set of components.
• The Netguru team polished the old UI so that the new interfaces would match the new technology and user expectations.
• A frontend developer wrote a new client-side application and integrated it with a new microservice backend in close collaboration with the microservice developers within senseFly.

Results

It took the team of one developer, a project manager, and a quality assurance specialist 3.5 months to deliver the whole project. Everything went as it was planned in the sprints. Thanks to leveraging Vue.js, the development time was more efficiently utilized, and it enabled the developer to build the app according to the client's requirements.

• Thanks to using TypeScript, the delivered application is robust.
• Code quality was improved thanks to extensive testing and modularization.
• The chosen app architecture and used stack ensured high scalability and complexity of the application.

Numbers

• 16K+ subscribers
• 50K+ monthly visits
• 3 project members
• 14 weeks to finish project