All About Flutter

What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source UI development framework developed by Google to build apps. It enables us to build cross-platform apps using a single codebase. A single codebase can build smooth, high-performance natively compiled applications for iOS and Android quickly.

Flutter provides a simple, powerful, efficient, and straightforward SDK for developing mobile applications in Google's language, Dart. Dart is an open-source, Object-Oriented programming language with C-style syntax used to power Flutter apps.

History

Google released Flutter in 2015, built by a team at Google led by the project lead, Eric Seidel. But it was made available to the public for the first time in 2017 when an alpha version of it (version 0.0.6) was released. The stable version of the Flutter app was released in December 2018.

In recent years,Flutter has grown in popularity as a platform for developing mobile applications among developers. The ability to create fast and reactive User Interfaces, a hot reload feature for quick iteration and testing, a rich set of customizable widgets and support for Material Design have enhanced the developer experience. Google is aggressively enhancing Flutter by issuing frequent updates, enhancing the Flutter SDK, and pushing it as a key alternative to developing real-world apps.

Why do we use Flutter to build apps? Some main features

Flutter has many features enabling you to build beautiful, fast apps, enhancing your overall developer experience. Some of the important features include:

• Cross-platform development: Flutter enables us to build cross-platform apps using a single codebase. A single codebase can build smooth, high-performance natively compiled applications for iOS and Android quickly.
• Hot reload: With the "hot reload" function, developers can quickly see the changes made to their code, increasing productivity and speeding up the development process.
• Fast Rendering: Flutter's reactive programming model and built-in widgets enable it to provide high-performance and fast rendering of UIs.
• Widget library: In Flutter, all elements are regarded as widgets. These widgets can range from simple elements like colours, padding, and menus to complicated and customizable ones that can be adjusted to an application's specific demands.

What Does a Flutter Developer Do?

A Flutter developer's major role is to develop mobile apps, and ensure that they match user requirements while being high-quality and performant. Creating apps that scale well, and have reactive User Interfaces that are consistent across platforms.

The developers collaborate with other development teams such as Project Managers, Designers, and QA testers to understand, create and maintain mobile apps. Additionally, they work with backend developers to integrate the app with servers and databases.

To summarise, generally, these are the duties performed by a Flutter Developer:

• Create Mobile apps with Flutter and Dart packages.
• Build apps that are responsive, easy to scale and deliver the requirements.
• Collaborating with designers and Product Managers to understand user requirements and build beautiful applications.
• Testing the application to ensure that the app is stable and secure.
• Working with the backend team to integrate the software with the databases and servers.
• Writing code that is efficient, and reusable.
• Troubleshooting and Debugging.

How to Become a Flutter Developer

To become a successful Flutter Developer, you need to learn some concepts that are a prerequisite. There are tons of YouTube videos and articles on the web that teaches Flutter, the community is also very strong and active!

You need to learn these skills to master Flutter Development:

Learn the basics of programming:

Learning the basics of programming is the most important thing before learning a tech stack. The knowledge of data types, control statements, loops, functions, and algorithms is a must before building a Flutter app. The programming languages that are beginner friendly include Python, Java, and Javascript. Build your logic that will be fundamental to development.

Learn Dart

Dart is a programming language used by Flutter to power apps. Learning the basics of Dart and Dart packages will give you the ability to build apps. You can refer to the official docs which are pretty nice and teach you from the basic to advanced level. Learn why Flutter uses Dart and how it improves the performance of the app.

Flutter Architecture

Learn about the Flutter Architecture and how the apps run behind the scene. It has an architecture that includes widgets and various widgets for building UI. Learn about stateless widgets and stateful widgets, and how they function.

UI Development

Once you learn the basics of architecture, Dart, it is time to get your hands dirty on UI Development. Start building beautiful User Interfaces, this would motivate you to try new things and understand how widgets work in the Flutter app. Utilise the concepts of stateless widgets and stateful widgets by building responsive User Interfaces.

Build Projects

Start practising by building projects. Project-based learning is the best way to master a tech stack. Make clones of your favourite applications, learn about APIs and how to integrate with the backend. This will give you an idea of how the software development process works!

Join Communities

The Flutter community is filled with enthusiastic people who are ready to help, contribute and work as a Flutter team. Ask your queries, contribute to open-source, and keep updating yourself with ongoing events and opportunities.

Learning the fundamentals and practising, developing projects will make you an awesome Flutter Developer. Working on Open-Source Projects will give you an idea of how to work in a Flutter team in an organization. Build apps, and showcase them to the world on your social media platforms so that it gets noticed by people who are looking for Flutter Developers.

Advantages of Flutter

Performance

Flutter's architecture is responsible for the high performance of the applications developed using Flutter. With the use of Dart, applications are compiled ahead of time, resulting in faster and smoother performance on devices.

Faster Development

The "Hot Reload" feature enables the developer to view their code's output in real-time. This makes the developer experience smoother and saves time. Developers can view the result of the changes they made in their code instantly. Also, developing apps on a single codebase that runs both on Android and IOS adds to saving time and money!

Native Support

Another significant advantage of Flutter is its ability to access native features. Features such as geolocation and camera, which require the use of native languages, can be easily accessed by developers using Objective-C, Swift, or Java.

Huge Community and Support

The Flutter community works as a "Flutter team", meaning they contribute, support each other and grow as a community. People are really supportive and enthusiastic. And there are tons of resources available on the web that would help you to learn from the basics to advanced concepts of Flutter.

Embedded Application Builder:

Flutter app development has the added advantage of having a built-in Application Builder. This feature includes many pre-developed UI elements that developers can customize and merge together. Moreover, the application builder offers great flexibility, enabling developers to create unique and unconventional ideas.

Flutter provides us with a lot of advantages that make it ideal for app development!

Installation of Flutter

1. Go to the official Flutter download link (URL), and download the latest version of Flutter SDK.
2. Unzip the folder, and update the system path to add Flutter's bin directory.
3. Flutter provides the command 'flutter doctor' to check whether all the requirements are met. Run this command to analyse the report. The report will show if anything is required or if your system is compatible.

   flutter doctor

4. The report will tell you how and what to update. Follow the commands of the report step by step and it should work fine!
5. If flutter doctor recommends installing Android Studio, you should install the latest version.
6. To start using Flutter in Android Studio, you need to install the Flutter and Dart plugin. This plugin offers a template for creating new Flutter apps and allows you to run and debug directly in Android Studio.

   Follow these steps to install the plugin:

   Open Android Studio.

   Go to File → Settings → Plugins.

   Look for the Flutter plugin and click on the Install button.

   When prompted, click Yes to install the Dart plugin.

   Restart Android Studio to complete the installation.

7. Finally, check whether the installation was complete or not by checking the version:

   flutter --version

Widget Class in Flutter

The fundamental principle of the Flutter framework is that all elements within it are widgets. Widgets are the primary means of developing the User Interface of the application.

The top-level widget of the application is the application itself, which is constructed from one or more child widgets. These child widgets, in turn, can be further built using additional child widgets. This provides a highly flexible and modular approach to building User Interfaces of any level of complexity.

For example, the widget hierarchy of a simple 'hello world' application:

• MyApp is a widget created by the user, constructed with the Flutter native widget MaterialApp.
• MaterialApp has a property called home, which specifies the User Interface for the home page. This is also a user-created widget called MyHomePage.
• MyHomePage is built using the Flutter native widget Scaffold.
• Scaffold has two properties, body and AppBar.
• The body property is used to define the main User Interface, while the appBar property is used to define the header User Interface.
• The header UI is constructed using the native widget AppBar, while the body UI is constructed using the Center widget.
• The Center widget has a Child property that specifies the actual content, which is built using the Text widget.

Stateless and Stateful Widgets

• Stateless Widgets :

  In simple words, a Stateless widget is a widget that cannot change its appearance. It is immutable, and you cannot change it after it has been created! This is utilized when the User Interface relies on the data contained within the object itself. Examples of Stateless Widgets are Text, RaisedButton, and IconButtons.

• Stateful Widgets :

  Unlike a Stateless Widget, a Stateful Widget has the ability to modify its appearance dynamically. It possesses a mutable state that can change throughout its existence. When the state of a stateful widget changes, it calls the setState() method to rebuild its User Interface. Stateful widgets are advantageous in producing dynamic content like interactive features, animations, and forms.

Development Best Practices

Some of the key points that a Flutter developer must keep in mind are:

Use Flutter's built-in widgets:

Flutter provides a wide range of pre-built widgets that can be used to create User Interface components. These widgets can help you save time and energy because they have already been designed for optimal performance and efficiency.

Follow the official style guide:

To develop neat, simple, and efficient code, it is best to follow Flutter's team style guide. Following the approach can help to ensure consistency within your project and make it easier for other developers who want to contribute.

Use Dart's powerful features:

Using Dart's features efficiently can be a game-changer for your next project! It offers a wide range of features such as asynchronous programming, streams, and mixins. Utilizing these features will speed up the software development process.

Test your code rigorously:

Testing is an essential component of the software development process. It ensures your code functions as expected without any bugs. Flutter provides a wide range of testing tools that include unit tests, widget tests, and integration tests.

Optimize your app's performance:

Flutter has many tools for optimizing your app's performance, such as the Performance Overlay and the Flutter DevTools. Use these tools to identify and fix performance issues in your code.