Book Image

Flutter for Beginners

By : Alessandro Biessek

Book Image

Flutter for Beginners

By: Alessandro Biessek

Overview of this book

Google Flutter is a cross-platform mobile framework that makes it easy to write high-performance apps for Android and iOS. This book will help you get to grips with the basics of the Flutter framework and the Dart programming language. Starting from setting up your development environment, you’ll learn to design the UI and add user input functions. You'll explore the navigator widget to manage app routes and learn to add transitions between screens. The book will even guide you through developing your own plugin and later, you’ll discover how to structure good plugin code. Using the Google Places API, you'll also understand how to display a map in the app and add markers and interactions to it. You’ll then learn to improve the user experience with features such as map integrations, platform-specific code with native languages, and personalized animation options for designing intuitive UIs. The book follows a practical approach and gives you access to all relevant code files hosted at github.com/PacktPublishing/Flutter-for-Beginners. This will help you access a variety of examples and prepare your own bug-free apps, ready to deploy on the App Store and Google Play Store. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with Dart programming and have the skills to develop your own mobile apps or build a career as a Dart and Flutter app developer.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Free Chapter

Section 1: Introduction to Dart

Section 1: Introduction to Dart

An Introduction to Dart

An Introduction to Dart

Getting started with Dart

Understanding why Flutter uses Dart

Introducing the structure of the Dart language

Introduction to OOP in Dart

Further reading

Intermediate Dart Programming

Intermediate Dart Programming

Dart classes and constructors

Interfaces, abstract classes, and mixins

Understanding Dart libraries and packages

Introducing async programming with Futures and Isolates

Introducing unit testing with Dart

An Introduction to Flutter

An Introduction to Flutter

Comparisons with other mobile app development frameworks

Flutter compilation (Dart)

Flutter rendering

Widgets introduction

Section 2: The Flutter User Interface - Everything is a Widget

Section 2: The Flutter User Interface - Everything is a Widget

Widgets: Building Layouts in Flutter

Widgets: Building Layouts in Flutter

Stateful versus stateless widgets

Built-in widgets

Understanding built-in layout widgets

Creating a UI with widgets (favor manager app)

Creating custom widgets

Handling User Input and Gestures

Handling User Input and Gestures

Handling user gestures

Validating Input (Forms)

Custom input and FormField

Putting it all together

Theming and Styling

Theming and Styling

Material Design

Using custom fonts

Dynamic styling with MediaQuery and LayoutBuilder

Routing: Navigating between Screens

Routing: Navigating between Screens

Understanding the Navigator widget

Screen transitions

Hero animations

Section 3: Developing Fully Featured Apps

Section 3: Developing Fully Featured Apps

Firebase Plugins

Firebase Plugins

Firebase overview

Firebase authentication

NoSQL database with Cloud Firestore

Cloud Storage with Firebase Storage

Ads with Firebase AdMob

ML with Firebase ML Kit

Developing Your Own Flutter Plugin

Developing Your Own Flutter Plugin

Creating a package/plugin project

A plugin project structure

Adding documentation to the package

Publishing a package

Plugin project development recommendations

Accessing Device Features from the Flutter App

Accessing Device Features from the Flutter App

Launching a URL from the app

Managing app permissions

Importing a contact from the phone

Integrating the phone's camera

Platform Views and Map Integration

Platform Views and Map Integration

Displaying a map

Adding markers to the map

Adding map interactions

Using the Google Places API

Section 4: Advanced Flutter - Resources to Complex Apps

Section 4: Advanced Flutter - Resources to Complex Apps

Testing, Debugging, and Deployment

Testing, Debugging, and Deployment

Flutter testing – unit and widget testing

Debugging Flutter apps

Profiling Flutter apps

Inspecting the Flutter widget tree

Preparing apps for deployment

Improving User Experience

Improving User Experience

Accessibility in Flutter and adding translations to apps

Communication between native and Flutter with platform channels

Creating background processes

Adding Android-specific code to run Dart code in the background

Adding iOS-specific code to run Dart code in the background

Widget Graphic Manipulations

Widget Graphic Manipulations

Transforming widgets with the Transform class

Exploring the types of transformations

Applying transformations to your widgets

Using custom painters and canvas

Animations

Introducing Animations

Using animations

Using AnimatedBuilder

Using AnimatedWidget

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Using custom painters and canvas

Flutter aims to provide the best possible tools for the developer to construct application user interfaces with no limitations. By now, you are probably already convinced of this, with the numerous widgets it provides, the facility of extending those widgets, and the universe of possibilities that the framework offers.

The simplicity that Flutter brings to the UI composition does not end with widgets. How about changing the widget look? I'm not talking about extending with a Transform widget by translating or rotating it. We can create a widget with its own unique appearance, its own shape, and its own behaviors. That is possible with the help of three main classes: CustomPaint, CustomPainter, and Canvas.

The Canvas class

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