To understand this let’s first understand what Stateful Builder is?
StatefulBuilder is a widget having a mutable state (whose state can be change) what makes it’s special is its only rebuild the particular widget which is wrapped under the Stateful Builder. Thankfully no again and again rebuilding of the whole widget.No matter the widget which is wrapped under the Stateful Builder is in Stateless or stateful Widget.
Now question arising is we know Stateless Widget it can’t rebuild until it gets a new instance. ( SetState is not working)
what happens is Stateful builder has the power of StateSetter function passed to the builder is used to call a rebuild itself instead of a typical state of the whole Widget.
Any variables that represent state should be kept outside the build function means You have to declare the variable outside the build method for the magic happens.
As I mentioned above it only rebuild a particular widget. It only gives a new instance(State) to that particular widget. so you have wrapped all widget(view) you want to see the change in StatefulBuilder.
In order to understand Why can’t Stateful Builder replace a Stateful widget. Lets first understand what makes is different between Stateless and Stateful Widget.
Have you noticed in stateless override build method and on the other hand in Stateful widget first override createState and then override build method? What happens under the hood is when stateless widget gets an instance its build function is invoked. and in stateful widget first, create state giving instance to build function. get it?? That’s how our favourite setState is working. After running setState ,createState giving a new instance to build method and widget rebuilds.
Now we are in pretty much good condition to understand Why can’t Stateful Builder replace Stateful widget.
If it’s rebuilding the particular part of the widget tree. Why we can’t use instead of Stateful Widget?
If you store any state in instance variables in the stateless widget it may be lost at any time as the constructor for the stateless widget may be called repeatedly, just like the build method. Only the associated instance State of a Stateful widget is preserved by Flutter.
StatefulWidget is retained it state even across rebuilds, That’s why you see sometimes misbehaviour of TextEditingController in Stateless Widget
Or if you on sturboness of using StatefulBuilder with Stateless Widget then you have to save state by Global keys.
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So, in this era of growing automation, where the most used hand handled device a.k.a smartphone is just not a mere device used for calling anymore, the “Smart” prefix is used because of its highly advanced capabilities making one’s life easier by providing day-to-day activities in one place.
According to statista.com, the number of smartphone users worldwide is approx. 3.5 Billion as of 2020 and is forecasted to grow to 3.8 Billion by 2021. Now you can imagine the widespread use of smartphones and how it is only meant to increase day by day. This enormous smartphone population is majorly dominated by two operating systems in the market, namely Android and iOS, and Android proving to be more dominating out of both in the market. The duo accounting for 99% of the active smartphones in the world wherein 2020 Android and iOS held a market share of 74.3% and 24.76% respectively.
Where does Flutter come in between all this?
Okay, now imagine two different operating systems leading the smartphone industry having different architecture, a different way of working, a different way of building. From a developers point of view, earlier there’s suppose be two different sets of developers, with different programming knowledge which develops for either one of the OS. The native apps are created specifically to be run on the target platform with the support of all the native technologies and other hardware components such as camera and calendar but they have some cons. With the introduction of cross-platform app development the cons of the native app development could be removed. In this, after writing the application’s code, it can be deployed on different devices and platforms without worrying about incompatibility issues with the advantages like:
Affordable and time saver
Easy and fast development
Wider audience reach
Various cross-platform app development frameworks are: Appcelerator, PhoneGap, Kony, Xamarin, Sencha Ext Js, MonoCross, AdobeBuild, React Native, Flutter.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is a mobile SDK for building high apps for iOS and Android, from a single codebase
But wait, whenever one speaks about Flutter the one question that comes across the mind of someone not so familiar with it is, “Are you sure?
Bcoz that’s not even public”, the questions about its presence, about its consideration and if that it is then they are worth a thought because Flutter is like a newborn baby into the cross-platform app development framework but maintained by Google; a product of Google with some promising capabilities promoted with a tagline that Google uses to define it, “Build native apps in record time”.
Why use Flutter?
Before jumping onto the points stating out the features and advantages of the Flutter, let’s talk about the previously existing methodology like
Native platform based SDKs
Like, Apple iOS SDK and Google AndroidSDKwhich using two different languages Objective-C/Swift and Java/Kotlin, respectively. Both SDKs are platform-dependent and have their own programming languages, so a developer either should know both the languages and even then they have to code individually or should miss out on the opportunity and just work for either one of the platforms.
On the other hand, Flutter being cross-platform framework deals with the concept of the individuality and helps writing a single code in a language called Dart that can be used to create an app for both the operating system thus saving the time of developers and not to miss the opportunity by being dedicated to a single platform.
WebViews Then came the cross-platform frameworks to deal with the cons of native frameworks but those cross-platform frameworks such as PhoneGap, Ionic, etc were merely based on Javascript and WebView. App using WebViews creates HTML and then displays it in a WebView on the platform and using the JavaScript bridge it is difficult for languages to talk directly to native code.
Reactive Views So to deal with the drawbacks of WebViews Reactive web frameworks like ReactJS came in use which provides the simplified WebView through the use of reactive programming.
This doesn’t use the concept of WebViews and instead uses a JavaScript bridge to access the native widgets which can cause performance issues as widgets are typically accessed frequently. On the other hand, Flutter also provides reactive style views but makes the use of complied programming language namely Dart to avoid the performance issues caused by the JavaScript bridge.
Flutter vs Other Hybrid Technologies
Flutter vs Xamarin:
The tussle of programming languages:
Xamarin uses C# which is one of the popular programming languages among the developers and if you’re familiar with it then you can straightaway start using Xamarin. But Flutter uses Dart language though relatively new but if you’re familiar with the concepts of OOPs languages such as Java, C++ then learning Dart isn’t much of a trouble. In fact, dart has many capabilities like:
It can be trans-complied to javascript using the dart2js compiler.
Dart also supports both AOT and JIT compilation which makes the processing faster.
Even though C# is one of the top popular languages on GitHub but Dart
Community Support
Xamarin has been in the field for long now and thus have a larger community, which comprises of experienced and willing to share knowledge developers. On Xamarin forums, committed developers share their code and experience, helping each other out. The platform is also supported by Microsoft which keeps updating its documentation from time to time. On the other side, though Flutter is the new age framework introduced its stable version in 2018, it had a limited community at its early stages but with time its community has upsurged abruptly, the Twitter community is approx 80k+ while that of Xamarin is 70k+ followers, the Reddit community is approx 30k+ followers and 88k+ stars on Github, the community has challenged their rivals in less time.
Flutter vs React Native:
The tussle of programming languages:
The comparison among the programming languages is inevitable when comparing two different frameworks to marks one’s processing. React Native supports various languages like JavaScript (dynamically typed), Typescript and JS with flow. While Flutter supports Dart which is a newly introduced language based on the concept of OOPs so it won’t be a hassle to work across it.
Community Support
React Native has been in the field since 2015 and Flutter released the first stable version in 2018 yet Flutter has surpassed React on Github with Flutter at 88k+ stars and React at 85k+ stars which itself tells you about the take of the developers regarding the both. React which is considered on the best Cross-Platforms is facing challenges from Flutter.
What do the stats say?
This is the data from the last 12months and the curiosity about flutter has been surging in the developers’ minds all around the world.
Advantages of Flutter:
Fast development
Flutter uses a Hot Reload feature which makes the app development more dynamic and faster.
Suppose you have to make some changes like add features, fix bugs, to the code and want those changes to be implemented instantly, Hot Reload is what makes it happen in flutter where the changes are added in milliseconds.
This Hot Reload feature comes way handy in the developer- designer/tester relationship, where the latter can work together with the developer on UI, making changes.
Beautiful, vivid UIs
Flutter has a rich set of Material design and Cupertino widgets which help to build customized, beautiful designs without the limitations of OEM widgets.
Native performance
Flutter widgets incorporate all the indifferences of both the native platforms, iOS, and Android such as scrolling, navigation, icons, and fonts which provide native performances on both.
Productivity
Flutter provides high productivity by developing apps for both iOS and Android just by using a single codebase. The developers just have to write the code once and that single code will be able to build apps for both platforms.
Flutter for all
Flutter, started as the cross-platform development tool specifically focusing on the apps on the smartphone but that wasn’t it’s limit, Flutter for web was introduced with Flutter v1.12 as a beta version, which is basically web apps using Flutter. Also, Flutter is like the first-class citizen of Fuschia OS. Now, you can also build apps for MacOS, flutter enabled support for MacOS in the dev channel as of 1.13.
Various Programming Standards
Concurrent programming Flutter makes abundant use of asynchronous functions such as Futures to do task parallelly. For example, To report when an image is loaded, futures are used on the basis of whether a future has been completed or not.
Composition Since everything in Flutter is a widget and when I say everything it means everything. Flutter makes efficient use of composition in its widgets creation, its composes objects with a limited behavioral span to make a complex widget. For example,
Generic Programming “types-to-be-specified-later” seems less hectic in programming, Flutter follows the same paradigm throughout its structure. For example, the state class takes a parameterized widget type.
Reactive Programming In Flutter, the widget and the element trees are reactive in nature. Reactive in the sense that any changes in the state are immediately propagated down the widget tree using the build method and are also propagated back up the widget tree using the event handlers.
With the increase in curiosity in the developer community, an increase in popularity in the GitHub, the fact it’s being backed by the upsurging and established tech giant Google and looking at its various advantages you can definitely look it up for building a cross-platform app. The only major competitor you might have in mind might be ReactNative but taking in the time/popularity ratio into consideration, I think Flutter should be your go.
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In this Article, We are going to learn about How Exactly Flutter Renders Widgets. This may might not be a Key-Facets in the Daily development of Flutter Apps but will surely give you up a Prominent Understanding about making of Performant Flutter Apps & what constitutes behind the idea of Flutter Working under the Hood.
For Novice,
Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.
To get a visual understanding through the help of video , Please watch:
“Everything is a widget in Flutter”
So, In order to understand Widget rendering in flutter . Let’s see what the flutter document has to say about Widget in its official documentation .
But what might will come up in your mind is that how can User Interface be Immutable(unchangeable) as we all know that UIs are not at all immutable as we readily mutate different parts of our UIs by swapping pieces in|out by adding divergent widgets. So, If Widgets are Immutable then
How Does Flutter Manage State of your UI?
Apparently, what Flutter does is that It actually manages this through with the help of 3 trees instead of a Singleton for the State Management.
Amalgamating these 3 different concepts, Make the rendering of a UI as performant as as we possibly can.
Flutter manage these 3 Different tree in for its rendering process:
So we’ve already seen that a widget is immutable,and so that kind of makes sense because you are working with a declarative framework so you grasp what your UI is going to like like & configure it with widgets.
Widget describe configuration of an element which are particularly an instantiation of those widget. It can also be termed as the mutable piece of the tree or It’s the thing that manages updating and changing of the UI , controlling lifecycle of widgets .
Thirdly, we have a RenderObject which is what’s going to lay out and paint your UI.
What needs to be Amply Clear here is that on the point of widget drawing , Flutter does not look at the Widget tree but the RenderObject tree.
But Why are we even creating 3 trees ?
For this we need to drop down onto the level & look at source code from flutter framework for when it create a flutter app.
Step-by-Step Walkthrough ::
Flutter app calls runApp() function initially:
It takes the Widget given by the runApp and put it at root of tree.
Widget then creates the LeafRenderObjectElement called leaf, as tree are only one level deep with one widget. Element then request creation of RenderObject and passes all of the configuration needed to paint the widget. Now we have our widget trees but what if we wanna do some changes:
Let’s run it again and see what happens
You want to change some aspect of your widget so what happens when something changes in our widget.You probably will still be asking Why are we doing this amount of task to get one thing on screen ,this will unfold when:
Magic really happens when things change
This can be understood by setting 2 runApp function:
Flutter realises it has done the stipulated amount of needed work so how it can reuse it. It will then call canUpdate method which can be performed when either : runtime or keys of widgets match. Alas, Render Paragraph is updated — Element update next time it paints UI. Using our RenderObjecttree its going to paint new values:
We have readily swapped one immutable widget though we have neither created|destroyed anything much- used a simple updatemethod here , Optimising amount of work needed going from one UI state to other — Ensuring that weReuse .
Reuse: This can be easily shown by a Demo which readily shows that if the render object element is same flutter reuse most if its components so that it can maintain the desired frame-per-second.
Demo::
The above flutter app has 2 trees which are almost identical with a row consisting- RichText , SizedBox & Image .
What’s the dire need as we know is that on widget rebuilding no new RenderObject should be created — RenderObject should remain Same .
This can be Illustrated with the help of Dart Dev Tools that can be considered as browser based tools to debugging and analysing flutter Apps.For Overview about Dart Devtools::
:: Opening Dart DevTools , Widget tree will be shown on one side and other side shows instance id of RenderObject:
We can readily see that on switching the tree — instance id of all(RichText SizedBox & Image) have remained the same . This is illustrated in DartDevTools by tapping on SwitchTree that even though widget tree is changed — new text and image are displayed but their RenderObject are bound to remain Same but No change is not all we need as in flutter things change Readily. To consider change I have removed the Sizedboxwith a completely different widget , Padding
When flutter realises it has now a different widget , Padding so that it does need SizedBox now .It completely destroys it and create a completely different RenderObject for padding but that’s Intended to happen . What needs to be kept in mind is that instance id of all other widget have remained the same .
Closing Thoughts
Flutter application usually possess multiple widgets with several layers of depth across a broad spectrum making it exorbitant in rebuilding widgets making it the optimum reason why flutter has adopted this method of using three concepts to minimise amount of processing it needs to do to make these changes. Let’s refresh reponsibility of these 3 tree:-
::Widget : Configure User Interface.
::Element :Ensure when things change updates are done accordingly.
::Render object : Sizes & Paint UIs on Screen.
So Yeah this is the reason Why Flutter and Dart enthusiasts are Elated with the Performance they are getting from Flutter Apps and been Quite Eventful in Paving Up Paths for many to Adapt early to this Wondrous Framework. Hopefully, this blog will help you in comprehending out the Widget Rendering in flutter by adding a Perfect Competitive niche to your knowledge base .
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Moor is just a Room spelled backward. Moor is a library allowing us to work with Flutter’s SQLite database fluently and in pure Dart. Moor also uses SQLite package. In flutter, it becomes very easy to create a database without writing code for SQL tables. Moor itself uses SQL as its backend so in flutter we can directly create a Table using Dart
Moor provides Tables, queries, migration, IDE for SQL, complex filters.
Moor helps you keep your database code simple and easy to understand.
Identify or catches the error and provides the solution
Moor is fast like FLUTTER.
Moor works on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, and the web.
Moor is stable and well tested with a wide range of unit and integration tests. It powers the production of Flutter apps.
Adding the dependency
moor_flutter:
This is the core package that provides APIs.
2. moor_generator:
Generate query code based on the Table defined by the user.
3. build_runner:
Tool for database code generation.
4. pubspec.yaml
dependencies: moor_flutter:
dev_dependencies: moor_generator: build_runner:
Creating a Table
A Table in dart is made by just extending our dart class to Table. Moor uses this Table and database class to create a Database.
SQL Table in dart
import 'package:moor_flutter/moor_flutter.dart'; part 'moor_database.g.dart';
class Orders extends Table { TextColumn get price => text()(); IntColumn get id => integer().autoIncrement()(); TextColumn get productName => text()();
} @UseMoor(tables: [Orders]) class AppDatabase{ }
Here IntColumn, TextColumn are the Table datatypes that are used to define the type of data that will the column of Table carries.
part 'moor_database.g.dart';
This is the file name that will contain the code generated using the Table. The id for each item in a column is id since it is autoIncrement().
2. Custom key
We can also provide our custom id to the table by just overriding the primaryKey.
@override Set<Column> get primaryKey => {id, productName};
The Database class
@UseMoor(tables: [Orders]) class AppDatabase extends _$AppDatabase { AppDatabase() : super(FlutterQueryExecutor.inDatabaseFolder( path: "db.sqlite", logStatements: true)); int get schemaVersion => 1; }
After creating this Database class we need to generate the moor_Database.g.dart file. So we have to run the below command in the terminal.
flutter packages pub run build_runner build
Here we are defining the path inside the Database folder and we are setting the logStatements to true. It will help in debugging.
Queries
These queries are given inside the AppDatabase class.
You can create select statements by starting them with select(tableName), where the table name is a field generated for you by the moor. Each table used in a database will have a matching field to run queries against. Any query can be run once with get() or be turned into an auto-updating stream using watch().
import 'package:moor_flutter/moor_flutter.dart'; part 'moor_database.g.dart';
class Orders extends Table { TextColumn get price => text()(); IntColumn get id => integer().autoIncrement()(); TextColumn get productName => text()();
We are using setState state management to control the state of the widgets.Onpressing the Raised Button price and productName are made equals to the priceConroller and productNameController.
.text converts the TextEditingController() to text
2. ListView of Orders
This widget contains the list of all the orders that the user provides using the UserInput widget.
StreamBuilder is used to listen to the stream watchAllOrder().
ListTile contains a CircleAvatar, title, subtitle, and trailing.
snapshot.data is the list of all the Orders that are fetched from the local database.
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Flavors hasalwaysbeenanIntrinsic part in native applications that can now be achieved in Flutter’s latest stable version which is equipped with key Integral updates & features.They let you define specific build configuration & modify them as you want . Flavors are largely used in large scale apps to ensure the correct deployment of desired version of the app by using different icons, app names which can also be easily switched up .
Android Flavors (or schemes on iOS) are defined by categorising different compile-time configuration build types for different stages of development taking in consideration the version of app the particular team is currently working to get in-lined the maximum effeciency.
Flavor: Same App, Different Behaviour.
Flutter, even in its own possess the different build modes which can be amicably used for different purposes
The different modes in flutter SDK are :-
:: Debug: It is the build mode we most use . A ‘ debug ’ banner is usually shown in the top right when you run this mode which can be easily removed by disabling a bool property debugshowcheckmodebanner.The final apk size of this build mode is large. By default,flutter runcompiles to debug mode.
:: Profile: Profile mode usually disabled in emulators and can be checked only for real devices to profile your app’s performance .Tracing and service extensions are enabled.Use command flutter run — profile in the terminal for execution.
:: Release: Release mode is the one with most optimal and minimal sized build mode as it is mainly used for deployment. Debugging & Service extensions are disabled. Use command flutter run — release in the terminal for execution.
In Testing, we mostly use flutter release as the app will surely behave much closer to the experience final user will get.
What is the Dire Need to use flavor ::
Large scale apps are to be dealt with Caution making flavors a must Use .While dealing with live projects a wrong update may prove to be fatal . Flavors prevent such to happen.
Flavors are apparently the Need of the hour as the team may be working in different stages in parallel so the same version may not always be appropriate for the whole team.
More focus can be laid down at Innovation by experimenting in earlier stages without any hindrance in release mode .
Create a new flutter app
:: Open your IDE — Select new flutter project . Enter project name andthen click Finish .This will install the sdk (if needed) and will create a new project
Creating Dart Flavors ::
Defining Flavours in dart can be easily done with the help of dart file FlavoursConfig.dart:
In FlavoursConfig we declare the flavors’s appname and other functionality specific as per flavour types .
FlavoursConfig ,an Inherited Widget will be used to configure our flavour making it easily accessible throughout the app. Now for each flavor, we create the main.dart file, used to start up the app . Here we have created 3 such main files:
development.dart :
development.dart
qatesting.dart :
qatesting.dart
production.dart:
production.dart
In qatesting.dart , FlavorsConfig created previously can be readily used to define a flavor, a custom color, and some values. The same must be done with development.dart & production.dart
In app.dart , Homescreen is created so that futher app can be made.
Flavor Platform Based Configuration ::
Dart created flavors are quite useful , It may also be worthwhile defining them on the basis of patform helping us in setting up personalised appicon & appname . This needs to be done by modifying android/app/build.gradle adding productFlavors to it :
build.gradle file
The flavourDimesions can be named as per developer ‘s intent but it should be concerned that it shall remain same to all the flavors created up.We have also created applicationIdSuffix as per flavors.
Flavor Based App Names ::
We can also assign different app names to each build flavor as needed.This can be done by creating a file namely strings.xml seperately inside each res directory of specific flavour. We assign a string to the app_name as per our wish though i have listed each string.xml by adding comments of their flavour names below:
This strings need to be referenced in the manifest also which can be passed by assigning parameter to android:label. This need to be referenced at android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml:
With the help of this Different app icons can be constructed :
Using Flavours using IDE:
Though we can always run the different flav our configuration with help of commands at the terminal But It is quite Handy to run flavours from your IDE (Android Studio ) by making custom edit configuration for them as :
:: From the Select panel we can Add/Edit Configuration. Choose Edit Configuration:
:: Select Add New Configuration — This can be done by selection add from the + at left hand corner or by using the shortcut alt+insert .
:: Select Flutter from the dropdown menu .
:: Select a appropriate name in the name menu . At the Data EntryPoint , we need to choose the corresponding main file needed from the Choose Dart File menu. Here , I have taken the name as Development.dart .
In the build flavour , We need to provide the build flavour defined in build.gradle . After Providing this Click apply and Select ok. This will create the configuration sucessfully.
Run different flavours in different flavour mode as by inserting the following commands in the terminal of your IDEs ::
Flavor on DEBUG mode can be run as :
flutter run –flavor production-t lib/production.dart
flutter run –flavor qa-t lib/qatesting.dart
flutter run –flavor development-t lib/development.dart
We can also run the flavour in Profile and Release from the help of terminal as PROFILE mode:
flutter run –profile –flavor production -t lib/production.dart
RELEASE mode:
flutter run –release –flavor production -t lib/production.dart
If Felt stuck between running multiple flavors , Ensure running flutter clean to clean build files created by app time-to-time.
Closing Thoughts
Flavors is a Quintessential tool in large scale apps in native applications which has now also been introduced in flutter’s latest version also .This basically ensures deployment of the rightly version of the app & decrease in development time by preventing any undesirable errors to occur.
If you have not used Flavors, I hope this article has provided you with valuable information about what is all about Flavors, and that you will give it Flavors — a Try. Begin using flavors for your apps !!
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In this post, we shall discuss the cloud firestore. We will learn about the various curd operation with the firestore. If you want to store the data locally inside your app you can read my post on the moor library.
How to integrate firebase with flutter android or ios app ?
Open firebase, click on get started which will take you to the Add Project screen.
Enter the project name and complete the other essential steps. It will take you to your project screen, click on the android icon.
Now the steps which are coming are very important so please do them very carefully. You have to enter the package name which is generally your application Id in your app-level build.gradle file. Add the other two optional fields if you wish to add them as well.
Now download the google-services.json. Move the downloaded google-serivces.json file into your Android app module root directory. (NOTE: Please check the file that you have downloaded has a google-services.json name or not because if you download it more than one time the name of the file changes to google-services(2).json, so please remove (2) from the file name or rename it to google-services.json)
You will see the following screen.
Here the first block contains the classpath that you have to add to your project level build.gradle file under the dependencies section. The second section contains a plugin and dependencies that you have to add to your project app-level build.gradle file. Please add these lines properly and carefully if you are adding them for the first time.
6. Now you should restart your application (NOTE: Please refer to full restart not hot reload). Wait for few seconds and your application will be successfully added with firebase. If you see the bellow screen on your firebase then you have successfully added firebase to your app…
Please add these line in your app/build.gradlemultiDexEnabled true to your defaultConfig section and also add implementation 'com.android.support:multidex:1.0.3' to the dependencies section.
Creating a collection on the cloud firestore
Click on start collection and enter the Collection ID.
Enter the field namewith type and value.
Here I have created a collection of products that contain two documents and it has four fields i.e productName, productPrice, imageUrl, isFavourite. You can customize them according to your requirements.
Uploading Data
To upload the data on the firestore we need to create a firestore instance.
snapshot.data.documents.length is the length of documents that we have created in our database.
itemCount: snapshot.data.documents.length,
We are returning a Text if the data is under the fetching process and if the data is loaded from the database then we build a ListView.builder which returns a ProductItem() widget.
Deleting Data
Deleting the data require a DocumentSnapshot to excess the documentID of the specific collection. It also requires the collection name.
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We welcome feedback and hope that you share what you’re working on using #Flutter. We truly enjoy seeing how you use Flutter to build beautiful, interactive web experiences!
Design Pattern is something which has been always a very Mysterious term for developers and we are very much confused between the term Software Architecture and Design patterns, So before starting anything about design patterns we need to clear this doubt regarding the Design Pattern and Software Architecture.
Software Architecture
Software Architecture is how the whole components of system software are organized and assembled. How they communicate with each other. And the Constraint the whole UI is ruled by.
So If we go through this definition we come across three important aspects and those are
How the whole components of system software are organized and assembled:- Architectural Pattern
How they communicate with each other:- Messaging & APIs
The constraints the whole UI is ruled by:- Quality Attributes
Design Pattern
Design Pattern could be defined as a common repeatable solution to recurring problems in software design. Design patterns can not be related to a finished design which will be directly used in code but it could be understood as a description or template for how to solve any common problem that may occur in many situations.
So If we go through this Definition we will find that
It is a solution to recurring problems of software development.
It is not a sample code which will be directly used in the project.
It is just a template that helps to solve any problem that occurs in software development.
Difference between Software Architecture and Design Pattern
So after going through both the definition we came to know that both of it could be differentiated on the basis
Scope:- Software Architecture has a universal scope, it has to managed at a Higher level likeServer Configuration, etc.Whereas Design pattern has a Lowe level scope that comes to the project internal code pattern.
Working:- Software Architecture is all about organizing and assembling the components in such a way that their communication is very much convenient and secure. Whereas a Design pattern is about how the components are built.
So I hope this comparison clears the doubt between Software Architecture and Design Pattern. So after having a piece of knowledge that what design pattern actually we will start a few famous design patterns which are mainly used in flutter development. So, First of all, we will start with the very Basic MVC Pattern and we will see how MVC is used in Flutter.
MVC In Flutter
MVC stands for the model view controller and its main work is to have a segregated code base, it aims to separate the code and area of responsibility while software development. The main focus of MVC is to separate the interface of the project from the functionality and the data that is used in the application. As we all know that neat and arranged things are always easy to use and maintain, the same is with MVC it makes the codebase neat and arranged and it achieves these with three of its components.
Model:- Model compromises of the data source it may be from anywhere DB, API, JSON, etc. In some cases, it may consist of some business logic.
View:- View is all about the user interface, I.e displaying data and taking inputs from the user.
Controller:- It contains the business logic, I.e Controlling what data will be shown to the user, user input handling, etc.
Communication Flow
Differentiating the three of these basic components of projects helps the developer to write a neat and modular code which makes the code Reusable and also helps in parallel development. It becomes very easy to work on the project as it does not affect other parts of the project if something is changed in one part. So keeping them separated needs a communication flow in which they will interact with each other and achieve the functioning of the project.
So as we could see from the following flow diagram the User interacts with the View part of the project which helps the user to see the Data and provide the input to the controller through the view. Controller Active as the brain of the project does the calculation or manipulation of data from the user or takes the data from the model to work on it and provides it to the View which shows the desired data to the user. Here we find that the View shows and receives the data but it directly not interact with the Model, it is the controller that plays a role between view and model in data manipulation and data representation. The View and the Model are tightly coupled to the Controller i.e View Knows how to communicate to Controller, Controller knows how to communicate to Model and Model and View works collectively without knowing each other existence.
Code Understanding:
If you have not installed the flutter SDK or you are still getting familiar with it :
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Let’s dive into the code part for an In-depth understanding of the process:-
1.Firstly, Create a new project and then clear all the code in the main.dart file. Type below command in your terminal:-
flutter create yourProjectName
Add the current latest version of MVC pattern package under the dependencies in pubspec.yaml file.
dependencies: mvc_pattern: ^latest version
Create a Model Class:
As Explained above a model class is created for both counter:-
Create the Main Controller :
The Controller is Created as this Basically Ensures the interaction with the model :
Adapting it Into The View :
The controller is then bound to the view.dart file so that the increment and decrement functionality may work as depicted.
Design Pattern is a Quintessential tool in large scale apps in native applications which you can also practice in flutter also. In this Blog, only MVC has been explained but this will a series of blogs and in the next blogs, we will be sharing about MVP, MVVM, CLEAN, etc.
If you have not used Design Patterns in Flutter, I hope this article has provided you with valuable information about what is all about it, and that you will give it Design Patterns — a Try. Begin using them for your Flutter Apps !!
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These days approaches for code delivery are gradually changing when writing quality code and the fine product delivery is a need of the time and in this situation, developers find themselves in the dilemma to manage both things at the same time but now this is not a big deal because of CI/CD(Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery). So let’s first know about CI/CD.
What is CI/CD
It can be easily understood by its name Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery and it is the process to directly merge your product version(code) into the main branch of your code and also helps to get builds of the product on the daily basis and also look after the integration problems, CI helps to trigger the build whenever code is pushed and integration tests make sure that the new part which has been added to the application does not break the previous build of the application and if the test or the build fails then ensure that the app remains stable, While CD is Continuous Deployment or Continuous Delivery is the automatic deployment of an app (to production).
Now let’s understand how to implement it
There are various ways to implement CI/CD and we are going to get it done by using Code Magic. It was launched at Flutter Live in December 2018 in cooperation with Google,Code Magic provides various options to implement CI/CD.
You can log in with any mentioned account, and now I am going to implement it by using GitHub.
But you should remember one thing your GitHub/Bitbucket/GitLab should have a repository in which you want to implement CI/CD.
After login with any particular account, You will navigate to the home page of code magic.
You will find this kind of screen now you have to choose in which repo you want to implement CI/CD. So here in every repository, you can see a setting icon and “start new build” options so before going to build option first we need to set up our repository for different workflows and many more options are there.
So at first, we click on that icon right before the “start new build” option and you will navigate to this screen.
Here you need to set up different workflows for a different kind of delivery and testing like Default workflow, Dev workflow, QA workflow, so create it by clicking “Duplicate workflow” in ton right side of the screen.
After creating duplicate workflows you can choose which workflow you need which type of customization (as shown in the above screen).
You also need to implement the same branches in your repo and that could be master, QA, dev.
So every time you need to push your code from dev (it is your choice) and then you need to merge changes into different branches in your GitHub.
After that, you need to select different workflows one by one and customize the setting according to your need, and I started the customization from Dev workflow and the first option I found to customize is “Build triggers”.
Here I have clicked on triggered on push, so every time we push over code over GitHub we will get a new build, you can choose different options according to your need for different workflows.
After that, we move to the next option below it where we would make some changes and this is “Test”.
As you can understand by seeing it, if the test fails, it automatically stops build.
Next option is “Build”
In this, you can select the flutter version, platforms, in which mode you want to release your app,
and the next part is ‘Publish’,
here you can select you to publish options like where you want to share your build or changes, even you can update your app in play store and apple app store directly and for this, you only need to fill some info by clicking on Android code signing and iOS code signing, you can share your build over email by providing mail addresses directly.
After all these customizations you need to click on “start new Build” top of the page and you will navigate to this page
here you can select your branch your workflow and by clicking on which type of build you want you can move forward. when you click any of the options you will find that it started creating a new build for every platform you selected during customization
and after completing its build you will receive builds on all platforms you selected. So here is the image of my mail inbox where I received a mail of new build now I can download Apk and test if the new changes are working fine or not.
So this was the small introduction of CI/CD through code magic.
Thanks for reading this article if you find anything that could be improved please let me know, I would love to improve.
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Flutter has been out there from a long enough time and has been taking the Mobile Development Community by Storm. With the scope of Mobile Development apparently increasing ,the need to Integrate CI/CD Tools in your flutter Apps is a Must enriching the work pattern of Team. One of the prominent among Continuous Integration is Bitrise.
Continuous Integration:
Continuous Integration is the process of merging and syncing your code to one dedicated git provider and automating your build process upon performing the tests. The software development process is to make your development flow smoother and keep your code clean when working in a big team code merging often ends up in issues. Continuous integration is about making sure that every change is merged into one dedicated branch upon task completion and to get a corresponding build for the same.
CI using Bitrise:
Bitrise is cloud-driven CI/CD tool which has four major points as described by them:
Complete mobile development stack inclusion:
Bitrise promises support for both native as well as cross-platform, be it Java or Kotlin, Objective C or Swift, or Iconic, React or Flutter it got you all covered.
Code independence:
Whether you have your code on Github or on Bitbucket or on GitLab or on it’s private or public git service. It will get your code for you.
Hardware independence:
Since Bitrise is a cloud-driven tool you don’t need any specific hardware to make this work. All you’ve to do is just add your app to their dashboard and voila!
Build anytime:
Webhooks works on pull-request and every time a request is made the webhook gets triggered or makes a custom webhook or schedule your builds.
Let’s Start
Now, that we have had an idea about continuous integration and about Bitrise lets integrate Bitrise to our Flutter app.
Step 1: Setup your application
Create a basic app or choose an already existing one. I am going to start with the basic demo app just to give you the idea of Bitrise integration.
Create Flavors for your app. Now, I won’t go in detail about how to setup Flavors for your flutter app, for that please follow this Creating flavors of a Flutter app and Flutter Flavoring. But adding Flavors to your app is like setting it right for different build requirements. In an organization, it’s always a good practice to create flavors for your app, where you might handle different build instances for different purposes, one for Demo purposes, one for Dev, one for Staging, one for Production and every build might have different configurations, different icons, different names so with the use of flavors it gets easy to handle all these scenarios.
build.gradle:app/Android
The above-mentioned articles will help you create flavors for your flutter app for both platforms.
Step 2: Integrate your App to Bitrise CI
Now, that you’ve created flavors for your app, you can head over to Bitrise and sign up on the website or log in if you already have an account. Once you’re in the dashboard, click Add new application. This is where you’ll integrate your App to Bitrise after following the steps.
Procedure to integrate apps into Bitrise.
Now we’ll look into these steps:
Choose Account Here, you choose your Bitrise account to which you want to add the app. Once you’ve chosen your account you’ll be required to select the privacy of your app, of the two options available i.e Private and Public. Private is for you and your team members while the Public is for everyone.
Connect your repository Now, that you’ve selected your account and the privacy mode for your app you’re asked to select the repository for the source code of your app. There’re various options like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab or git URLs where the source code of your app already exists.
Adding an SSH key to your repository Now, that you’ve selected your repository you may need to give it access rights to Bitrise by integrating the SSH key to the repository, this is required for Bitrise to clone your code to their virtual machines. For this, you have two options, Automatic integration or Manual integration. When you select the Automatic option among the two on the right top corner of the step, an auto-generated key will be registered for Bitrise and corresponding public key for your Git provider. The Manual option lets you generate your own SSH key and register them to Bitrise and to your Git provider.
Choose the branch Select the branch of your repository from which the Bitrise will fetch the source code.
Build configuration After selecting the branch Bitrise will clone and validate it and upon validation, Bitrise will ask you to select the build config of the app which and to select the tests if available in your app which we created while setting up the app. There are two ways of doing this, Manual and Detected. In Manual mode, you can select the build configuration as per need while in Detected mode, Bitrise detects the existing config.
Select the App icon Select the app icon which you want you to use for your app if you have or you can skip this step for now.
Register a webhook So, you have almost added your app to Bitrise but there’s one finest and the best thing about CI’s i.e automation. I mean isn’t why we here after all? To make sure that the moment we make some changes in the code and as soon as we finish pushing the changes to the git provider Bitrise automatically tests the build and send us the build? That’s what this Webhook will do. It will keep an eye on the branch you’ve provided in the above steps for any push-requests, following which it will update its code and run the test setup by you and upon any kind of response either Build Successful or Build failure, a feedback mail to your registered mail id. This step is not mandatory as you can find this step later in the settings page so feel free to skip it.
Almost DONE! So, if you followed all the above steps correctly, rejoice! you’re almost done. Bitrise will automatically trigger a build for you and as soon as its completed you’ll be notified about it in your mail.
Bitrise Dashboard
Once your app is added to the Bitrise an initial build will kick off automatically and the report for the following will be mailed to you by Bitrise. Now, if you check the dashboard, on the right corner you’ll find your apps added to Bitrise. On clicking on it you’ll be navigated to the detail page where you can access the app workflow, builds, code, settings, etc.
App Detail Interface
Builds This will have all your build reports.
Workflow This contains the nuts and bolts of your app for Bitrise integration. You can edit or create workflows as per your requirement, you can sign your app for deployment to the play store or app store, edit/create environment variables that are used in in the flow, “bitrise.yaml” file is the config file that fetches all the configuration of your app on Bitrise.
Team This will let you control your team members related to this current app/project. You can assign the Admin, Developer, Tester, all that sort of work.
Code This lets you control the trigger token and webhooks for your app.
Conclusion:
I hope you got an idea about how to work with Bitrise in Flutter. Well, there are various options out there for CI and sometimes it’s not about which is best, it’s also about what you feel comfortable with. So, you’re all ready to explore further but all these tools are efficient only if your app/project is of enterprise-level when a number of people are working as a team on a common app/project and if you’re a sole developer you don’t want to go through this hassle.
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NoSQL, which stands for “not only SQL,” which is an alternative of traditional relational databases in which data is placed in tables and data schema is carefully designed before the database is built. NoSQL databases are especially useful for working with large sets of distributed data.
What is Hive?
Hive is a lightweight, NoSQL database, easy to implement and also having high benchmark on the devices and written in the pure dart. Until and unless you need to model your data with many relationships, in that case it recommended to use SQLite.It has no native dependencies (it runs on Flutter Web!) can be the best option. Hive supports all platforms supported by Flutter.
Hive having the concept of boxes(which store data). A Box has to be opened before use. In addition to the plain-flavoured Boxes, there are also options which support lazy-loading of values and encryption.
What are Boxes?
All data stored in Hive is organized in boxes. A box can be compared to a table in SQL, but it does not have a structure and can contain anything. For a small app, a single box might be enough. For more advanced problems, boxes are a great way to organize your data. Boxes can also be encrypted to store sensitive data.
Before you can use a box, you have to open it. For regular boxes, this loads all of its data from the local storage into memory for immediate access.
var box = await Hive.openBox<E>('testBox');
To get an already opened instance, you can call Hive.box('testBox') instead. It doesn’t matter though if you try to call openBox multiple times. Hive is smart, and it will return an already opened box with the given name if you’ve previously called that method.
To prevent holding unnecessary data in memory, you can close the box when you are done with your box. Don’t worry if you forget to close the boxes . Smarty Hive do it for you. Its also has a handy method for closing all the box.
Hive supports all primitive types, List, Map, DateTime, BigInt and Uint8List. Any object can be can stored using TypeAdapters.
In this, we are covering how to save a custom object(Employee)showing Basic CRUD operations:
Adding Dependencies:
dependencies: flutter: sdk: flutter
# The following adds the Cupertino Icons font to your application. # Use with the CupertinoIcons class for iOS style icons. cupertino_icons: hive: latest version hive_flutter: latest version path_provider:
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FlutterDevs team of Flutter developers to build high-quality and functionally-rich apps. Hire flutter developer for your cross-platform Flutter mobile app project on an hourly or full-time basis as per your requirement! You can connect with us on Facebook, GitHub, and Twitter for any flutter related queries.
