I’m building an on-demand fuel delivery app. Think UberEats/DoorDash but for gas. Customers create a Fuel Order, a Fueler claims the order and delivers the gas.
Like Uber/UberEats, we have a map feature that is meant to show the Customer the current location of the Fueler in live time, and that shows the Fueler live locations/directions to the Fuel Order’s service address.
The current implementation is basic. On the Fueler’s end, every 15 seconds, their “current_location” is updated in the database. In the Fuel Order, we use Google Maps Extended to show the direction line from the Fueler’s current_location to the Fuel Order’s service_location.
The problem is that despite updating the Fueler’s address this way, their location on the map itself does not update unless the page is refreshed, which isn’t ideal for user experience.
So, I’m wondering what are the simplest, streamlined and scalable ways to get this Uber/Uber Eats location tracking feature in a Bubble app? It doesn’t have to specifically be Google Maps Extended plugin, but if you have suggestions to make that work, I’d like to hear that too.
How are you storing the delivery person’s location data?
Websocket using supabase realtime or other external backend would be more flexible.
If you are using a tracker for this, you will have more possibilities.
At the moment, I’m doing the impractical use of saving the Fueler’s current geographical location every few seconds, but I know this is a terrible implementation.
I found a platform called Ably that sounds like the supabase thing you’re talking about. I’m trying to understand more about that method.
Sounds like the markers on the map need updating every X seconds such that they correspond to the newer location. So every X seconds you would clear/remove the present marker then add another marker based on Fuelers current location.
Nice! Do you have any videos showing how you’ve done it. Whenever I look up this sorta thing, it’s mostly steps for connecting Google Map API and how to show the directions line in Google Maps Extended, but they never seem to go into live location tracking/updates.
Or do you have any written steps for how you implement it?
Hello. Thanks for sending that. I’ve actually watched this before, but it didn’t seem to touch on the live map updating things that I’m talking about.
Ya know, like how UberEats or DoorDash does it.
But I’ll give it another watch. Maybe it does touch on that and I’ve missed it. A lot of these videos mostly touch on adding the map and showing markers, but not on live map updates and stuff. I’ve watched a few of them.
In the meantime, I’d love to know how you did your specific implementation, if you don’t mind.
