Flutter, the cross-platform developed by google is much in the talk about its splendid User Interface ability and animations. The power of it is hindered if somehow we suffer issues of screen freezing, animations not working as intended, and screen jumping which in turn make the whole user experience negative. Usually, what triggers this phenomenon is either accessing multiple api requests synchronously, image processing, animations, or any other lengthy operations.
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A lot of developers want to address this issue in their applications so that such a situation may not arise at all which could be easily done by creating multiple Isolate which are separate threads with their event loop that don’t share a memory with the main isolate (thread) that runs the Flutter app for such tasks. This process is called Multithreading.
Multithreading is a technique by which several processors can use a single code set at different execution stages.
Dart is a single-threaded language: All dart code runs in a single isolate, making them so important that the entirety of dart applications runs in an isolate.
Need for Isolate in Flutter
In Flutter, everything is executed in a single main thread even in the case of async / await thus Multithreading is essential because when working on mobile platforms, some expensive operations within this flow either need to be asynchronous or should run on the background threads. We accomplish this process with the use of Isolates.
Isolates are useful for running code that may take a long time to complete without blocking the main thread, which is important for providing a smooth and responsive user experience. Multithreading allows for parallel execution of two or more parts of a program, which can make the program run faster by taking advantage of the multiple cores or CPUs available on the computer. It can also make the program more responsive to the user by allowing it to perform multiple tasks at the same time.
Before deep-diving into the types of isolates there are certain things to keep in mind :
No communication between threads : isolate created possess no communication between each other including the custom object in flutter isolate .
Communication is done with help of ports : Any communication between threads is carried through ports i.e. — SendPort & ReceivePort
Types Of Isolate In Flutter
Isolate in flutter can be created in these 2 ways :
: Computefunction
: Spawnfunction
: spawn function
Creating an isolate using spawn is simple, it requires 2 arguments: a void Function(dynamic) callback, and an optional dynamic message.The callback function represents the entry point of the isolate, and the message argument can be used to pass data to the isolate when it is spawned.
Here’s an example of how you can use Isolate.spawn to create an isolate:
This will create an isolate and run the isolateFunction callback in the isolate. The main isolate will pass the string “Hello from the main isolate!” as the message argument to the isolate, which will be printed by the isolate’s isolateFunction.
Note that isolates are separate threads of execution, and they do not share a memory. This means that you will need to use inter-isolate communication techniques, such as message passing or shared memory, to pass data between isolates.
Compute function
In Flutter, you can use the compute function to run a function in a separate isolate. The compute function is a convenience wrapper around the Isolate.spawn function that makes it easier to use isolates for compute-intensive tasks.
Here’s an example of how you can use the compute function to create an isolate in Flutter:
In this example, the computeIntensiveFunction is run in a separate isolate using the compute function. The compute function returns a Future that completes with the return value of the function when it is finished. In this case, the computeIntensiveFunction returns the square of the input value, so the result variable will be set to 10000.
Note that the function passed to the compute the function must be a top-level function or a static method, and it must take a single argument of type dynamic and return a value.
How do Isolates Communicate with each other?
To communicate between isolates, you can use a combination of SendPort and ReceivePort objects.
Here’s an example of how you might use these classes to send a message from the main isolate to a new isolate:
To send a message from the new isolate back to the main isolate, you can use the SendPort object that was passed from the main isolate to the new isolate.
Here’s an example of how you might use this SendPort to send a message back to the main isolate:
In the main isolate, you can use a ReceivePort to listen for incoming messages from the new isolate.
Here’s an example of how you might use a ReceivePort to receive a message from the new isolate:
The flutter_isolate the package provides a way to run Dart code in a separate isolate (a separate execution context). Isolates are used to run code concurrently and can be useful for implementing load balancing, as they allow you to distribute workloads across multiple threads.
Here’s an example of how you can use the flutter_isolate package to load balance a workload in a Flutter application:
This example creates a list of three isolates, each running the same workload. You can then distribute the workload across the isolates by calling the run method on each isolate.
You can customize the behavior of the isolates by passing in additional options when creating them. For example, you can specify a custom message handler for the isolate, or configure the isolate to run in a background isolate. Please refer to the flutter_isolate package documentation for more details.
Reference :
flutter_isolate | Flutter Package
A Dart isolate is roughly equivalent to a single, independent execution thread. In a Flutter context, creating…pub.dev
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