Flutter for Beginners - Third Edition: Cross-platform mobile development from Hello, World! to app release with Flutter 3.10+ and Dart 3.x

✍ Scribed by Thomas Bailey, Alessandro Biessek

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 406
• Edition: 3
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Follow this step-by-step illustrated guide to launch your own Flutter apps and gain hands-on experience

Key Features:

• Get up to speed with the basics of Dart programming and delve into Flutter development
• Learn about Flutter widgets, plugins, and animations to create a high-quality, user-friendly app
• Package and deploy your Flutter apps to achieve native-like performance
• Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description:

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.

What You Will Learn:

• Understand the Flutter framework and cross-platform development
• Acclimate the fundamentals of the Dart programming language
• Explore Flutter widgets, the core widget library, and stateful and stateless widgets
• Discover the complete development lifecycle, including testing and debugging
• Get familiar with both the mobile and web app release processes
• Dig deeper into more advanced Flutter concepts like animation
• Explore common Flutter plugins ad how to use them
• Discover the Flutter community and how to stay up-to-date

Who this book is for:

If you are an existing mobile developer seeking a better way to develop cross-platform apps, an existing software developer looking to explore mobile app development, or someone investigating mobile apps and simply wants to know what the Flutter fuss is about, this is the book for you. Prior knowledge of Flutter and Dart is not required.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 1:Learning the Core Concepts
Chapter 1: What Is Flutter and Why Should I Use It?
Technical requirements
What is Flutter?
Backed by Google
Fuchsia OS and Flutter
Dart
One code base to rule them all
Open source framework
Hello Flutter – a first glimpse of Flutter
Installing Flutter
Development environment
Hello world!
Widgets, widgets, everywhere
Flutter rendering
Flutter – rendering by itself
Composability
Immutability
Everything is a widget
Building and running Flutter
Debug mode
Release mode
Profile mode
Supported platforms
The pubspec.yaml file
Running the generated project
Summary
Chapter review questions
Further reading
Chapter 2: An Introduction to Dart
Technical requirements
Getting started with Dart
The evolution of Dart
How to run Dart
Introducing the structure of the Dart language
Hands-on with Dart
Variables and data types
Variable declaration
Null safety
Built-in types
final and const
dynamic and using ‘as’
Dart operators
Control flows and looping
if/else
while and do-while loops
for loops
break and continue
switch
Hands-on, continued
Functions and methods
Function parameters
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 3: Flutter versus Other Frameworks
Native development
Developer skillset
Project management
Defect reports
Performance
Platform features
Hot reload
User experience
App size
New platforms
Retired platforms
Development resources
Overview
Cross-platform frameworks
React Native
Xamarin
Cordova
Framework popularity
The Flutter community
Events
News and discussion
Resources
Flutter strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
Weaknesses
Live Flutter apps
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 4: Dart Classes and Constructs
Object orientation in Dart
Objects and classes
Other OOP artifacts
Encapsulation
Inheritance and composition
Abstraction
Polymorphism
Functions as objects
Understanding classes in Dart
Class structure
Constructors
Class inheritance
Abstract classes
Interfaces
Mixins
Files and imports
The enum type
Using generics
When and why to use generics
Asynchronous programming
Dart Futures
Dart Isolates
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Part 2:Building a Basic Flutter App
Chapter 5: Building Your User Interface through Widgets
Technical requirements
Stateful/stateless widgets
Stateless widgets
Stateful widgets
Inherited widgets
The widget key property
Built-in widgets
Display widgets
User interaction widgets
Layouts
Advanced widgets (gestures, animations, and transformations)
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 6: Handling User Input and Gestures
Technical requirements
Handling user gestures
Pointers
Gestures
GestureDetector
Gestures in Material widgets
A deeper look at the stateful widget life cycle
Key life cycle states
Mounted
Input widgets and forms
Getting input through the onChanged callback
Getting input through a controller
Form and FormField
Accessing FormField’s state
Form
Custom input and FormField
Creating custom inputs
Custom input widget example
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 7: Let’s Get Graphical!
Technical requirements
Make me pretty
Using colors
Text style
Container decoration
Buttons
The Scaffold widget
Drawer
Snackbar
And there’s much more…
Creating elegant content lists
Understanding image types in Flutter
Out-of-the-box support
SVG
Lottie files
Slivers
Lists with navigation
SliverAppBar
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 8: Routing – Navigating between Screens
Technical requirements
Understanding the Navigator widget
Navigator 1.0 and 2.0
Navigator
Navigator 1.0
Navigator 2.0
Screen transitions
PageRouteBuilder
Custom transitions in practice
Passing data between screens
Passing state in widget parameters
InheritedWidget
BLoC
Redux
Other options
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Part 3:Turning a Simple App into an Awesome App
Chapter 9: Flutter Plugins – Get Great Functionality for Free!
Technical requirements
What is a plugin?
Benefits
Drawbacks
Where can I find plugins?
How do I add a plugin to my project?
The pubspec.yaml file
flutter pub
Using a plugin in your code
How do plugins work on iOS and Android?
MethodChannel
CocoaPods
Gradle
Common issues
Plugin breaking change
Plugin not working
PR not merged
Inconsistent dependencies
MissingPluginException
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 10: Popular Third-Party Plugins
Technical requirements
Exploring Firebase plugins
Firebase registration
Connecting the Flutter app to Firebase
FlutterFire plugins
Firebase initialization
Authentication
Realtime Database
Firestore
Analytics and Crashlytics
Cloud Storage
AdMob
Cloud Functions
ML with Google ML Kit
Messaging
Understanding Google Maps and Places
Exploring mobile device features
Camera and QR codes
Opening web pages
Local storage
Video
Payment providers
In-app purchases
Opening files
Plugins to help with your app support
App version
Device information
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 11: Using Widget Manipulations and Animations
Technical requirements
Transforming widgets with the Transform class
The Transform widget
Understanding the Matrix4 class
Exploring the types of transformations
Introducing animations
The Animation class
AnimationController
CurvedAnimation
Tween
Using animations
Rotate animation
Scale animation
Translate animation
Using AnimatedBuilder
The AnimatedBuilder class
Revisiting our animation
Implicitly animated widgets
AnimatedContainer
AnimatedFoo
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Part 4:Testing and Releasing Your App
Chapter 12: Testing and Debugging
Technical requirements
Unit testing
The Dart test package
Writing unit tests
Unit test mocking
Widget testing
The WidgetTester class
Widget test example
Running a widget test
Debugging your app
Debugging in the IDE
Additional debugging features
DevTools
The widget inspector
Profile mode
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 13: Releasing Your App to the World
Technical requirements
Preparing your app for deployment
Preparing the stores
Preparing for the web
Releasing your app on Android
AndroidManifest and build.gradle
Building and uploading your appbundle
Releasing your app on iOS
App Store Connect
Xcode
Building and uploading
Releasing your app on the web
Firebase hosting
PWA support
Tracking app usage and crashes
Crashlytics
Google Analytics
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Index
About Packt
Other Books You May Enjoy