Book Image

Flutter for Beginners - Third Edition

By : Thomas Bailey, Alessandro Biessek
5 (2)
Book Image

Flutter for Beginners - Third Edition

5 (2)
By: Thomas Bailey, Alessandro Biessek

Overview of this book

There have been many attempts at creating frameworks that are truly cross-platform, but most struggle to create a native-like experience at high-performance levels. Flutter achieves this with an elegant design and a wealth of third-party plugins, solidifying its status as the future of mobile app development. If you are a mobile developer who wants to create rich and expressive native apps with the latest Google Flutter framework, this book is for you. You’ll start with the basics of cross-platform development frameworks, specifically Flutter. You’ll then explore the Dart programming language which is the foundation of the Flutter framework. Next, you’ll get a feel for Flutter and how to create your first app, followed by an exploration of the various popular plugins that supplement the Flutter framework. Finally, you’ll explore testing and app release, including some common glitches that you may experience. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to create and release a basic Flutter app along with gaining a solid understanding of the Flutter framework and Dart language.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1:Learning the Core Concepts
6
Part 2:Building a Basic Flutter App
11
Part 3:Turning a Simple App into an Awesome App
15
Part 4:Testing and Releasing Your App

Variables and data types

Variables are key to any programming language, holding application state so that the correct execution flow can be followed, displaying the correct information to the user, and interacting with other systems through defined data structures.

Unstructured data can be dangerous, though, and may lead to bugs and difficult-to-maintain code. Therefore, a rich set of data types is required in a modern programming language. Let’s explore this area of the Dart language, starting with the basics of declaring a variable.

Variable declaration

Variables store references to data and are key to decision-making within your application. Variables have to be declared before they can be used.

A variable declaration follows many of the rules of similar programming languages, but due to type inference, Dart’s variable declaration can be looser.

The structure of a variable declaration is shown here:

type identifier = value;

type defines the data...