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TOP 12 Tech facts and history of creation and versions about Flutter Development
- Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google in 2015.
- The main goal of Flutter is to enable developers to build beautiful and high-performance apps for multiple platforms using a single codebase.
- Flutter uses a reactive and declarative programming model, which means that the UI is built based on the current state of the app and automatically updates when the state changes.
- The first stable release of Flutter was in December 2018, and it has since gained popularity among developers worldwide.
- Flutter was developed by a team led by Chris Sells and Tim Sneath at Google.
- One of the groundbreaking features of Flutter is its hot reload functionality, which allows developers to see the changes they make in the code instantly reflected in the app without losing the current app state.
- Flutter apps are written in Dart, a programming language also developed by Google, which offers a modern and efficient syntax.
- Flutter provides a rich set of pre-designed widgets, allowing developers to create beautiful and consistent UIs across different platforms.
- Flutter has a growing community of developers and contributors, which means that there is a wealth of resources and support available for those using the framework.
- Flutter has been adopted by major companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Philips, showcasing its suitability for building production-ready apps.
- Google has been actively investing in Flutter’s development and improvement, regularly releasing new versions and updates to address user feedback and add new features.
- Flutter’s performance is comparable to that of native apps, thanks to its use of the Skia graphics engine and its ability to compile directly to machine code.
TOP 10 Flutter Related Technologies
Languages: Dart
Dart is the primary programming language used for Flutter development. It is a versatile and object-oriented language known for its performance and ease of learning. Dart offers features like just-in-time (JIT) compilation, hot reload, and a strong type system, making it an ideal choice for building Flutter apps.
Framework: Flutter SDK
Flutter SDK is a comprehensive framework developed by Google for building cross-platform apps. It provides a rich set of pre-built UI components, along with a reactive programming model, which allows developers to create visually appealing and responsive apps. Flutter SDK follows a single codebase approach, enabling developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms.
Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a popular choice among Flutter developers due to its lightweight yet powerful features. It offers excellent support for Dart and Flutter development, including features like code completion, debugging tools, and seamless integration with Flutter’s hot reload feature. VS Code also has a vast collection of extensions that further enhance the development experience.
State Management: Provider
Provider is a state management library widely used in Flutter applications. It follows the InheritedWidget pattern and offers a simple yet efficient way to manage and share state across different widgets. Provider’s unidirectional data flow and minimal boilerplate code make it an excellent choice for managing app state in Flutter projects.
Networking: Dio
Dio is a powerful HTTP client library for Dart, commonly used for network requests in Flutter apps. It provides a straightforward and intuitive API for making HTTP requests, handling timeouts, intercepting requests, and more. Dio also supports features like file uploading, request cancellation, and response serialization, making it a robust choice for handling network operations.
Database: sqflite
sqflite is a widely used package for local database operations in Flutter apps. It provides a simple and efficient way to interact with SQLite databases, allowing developers to store and retrieve data locally. sqflite offers features like query execution, data manipulation, and transaction support, making it suitable for various data storage requirements in Flutter projects.
Testing: Flutter Testing Framework
Flutter Testing Framework is an integral part of Flutter SDK, offering a comprehensive set of tools for testing Flutter apps. It supports unit testing, widget testing, and integration testing, allowing developers to ensure the quality and functionality of their applications. The testing framework provides features like test-driven development (TDD) support, test coverage analysis, and easy integration with popular testing frameworks like Mockito.
What are top Flutter instruments and tools?
- Flutter: Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It was first released in May 2017 and has gained immense popularity since then. Flutter allows developers to build native-like apps for multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, web, and desktop, using a single codebase. With its hot reload feature, developers can instantly see the changes they make in the code, making the development process faster and more efficient.
- Dart: Dart is the programming language used to build Flutter apps. It was also developed by Google and was first announced in 2011. Dart is known for its fast performance and its ability to compile into native code. It provides features like strong typing, garbage collection, and asynchronous programming, making it a suitable language for building complex and responsive Flutter applications.
- Android Studio: Android Studio is the official integrated development environment (IDE) for Android app development. It provides extensive support for Flutter, including a dedicated Flutter plugin that offers features like code completion, debugging, and project templates. Android Studio is widely used by Flutter developers due to its robust set of tools and seamless integration with Flutter projects.
- Visual Studio Code: Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a lightweight yet powerful code editor developed by Microsoft. It has gained popularity among Flutter developers for its extensive Flutter extension, which provides features like IntelliSense, debugging, and code formatting. VS Code offers a seamless development experience for Flutter apps and is widely used for Flutter development across different platforms.
- Firebase: Firebase is a comprehensive mobile and web development platform provided by Google. It offers a wide range of services, including hosting, authentication, real-time database, cloud functions, and more. Flutter developers often integrate Firebase into their apps to leverage its powerful backend capabilities and simplify tasks like user management, data storage, and cloud messaging.
- Flutter Inspector: Flutter Inspector is a tool that comes bundled with Flutter SDK and allows developers to inspect and debug their Flutter apps. It provides a visual representation of the app’s widget tree, helping developers identify and resolve UI-related issues. It also offers performance profiling capabilities, allowing developers to optimize their app’s performance and identify potential bottlenecks.
- Flutter DevTools: Flutter DevTools is a suite of performance and debugging tools that provides insights into the inner workings of Flutter apps. It includes features like CPU and memory profiling, network monitoring, and widget inspector. Flutter DevTools helps developers analyze and optimize their app’s performance, making it an essential tool for building high-quality Flutter applications.
- Flutter Packages: Flutter Packages is a repository of reusable Flutter components and libraries contributed by the Flutter community. It allows developers to easily discover and integrate pre-built functionalities into their apps, saving time and effort. Flutter Packages covers a wide range of categories, including UI components, networking, state management, and more, providing developers with a vast ecosystem of ready-to-use solutions.
How and where is Flutter used?
Case Name | Case Description |
---|---|
Google Ads | Flutter is used by Google Ads to develop their mobile app. This allows advertisers to create and manage their ad campaigns directly from their mobile devices. Flutter’s fast rendering engine and customizable widgets make it an ideal choice for building a smooth and visually appealing user interface for the Google Ads app. |
Alibaba | Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, uses Flutter to power their Xianyu app. Xianyu is a popular online marketplace in China, and Flutter enables Alibaba to deliver a high-performance and consistent user experience across both Android and iOS platforms. |
Realtor.com | Realtor.com, a leading real estate website, leverages Flutter to develop their mobile app. With Flutter, Realtor.com can provide users with a seamless and intuitive property search experience, incorporating features such as filtering, map integration, and real-time updates on property listings. |
Reflectly | Reflectly, a popular journaling app, chose Flutter as their development framework. Flutter’s hot reload feature greatly speeds up the development process for Reflectly, allowing the team to iterate quickly and deliver new features to their users more efficiently. |
Hamilton Musical | The official Hamilton app, created for the renowned Broadway musical, is built using Flutter. Flutter’s cross-platform capabilities enabled the development team to create a single codebase that runs smoothly on both iOS and Android, helping to provide a consistent experience for fans of the show. |
Nubank | Nubank, a leading digital bank in Brazil, relies on Flutter for their mobile app. Flutter’s performance and ability to deliver a native-like experience make it an ideal choice for Nubank to provide their customers with seamless access to their financial services. |
Reflectly | Reflectly, a popular journaling app, chose Flutter as their development framework. Flutter’s hot reload feature greatly speeds up the development process for Reflectly, allowing the team to iterate quickly and deliver new features to their users more efficiently. |
Topline | Topline, a news and content aggregation app, utilizes Flutter for its development. With Flutter, Topline can deliver a visually appealing and responsive user interface, allowing users to easily browse and consume news articles from various sources. |
Abbey Road Studios | Abbey Road Studios, the iconic recording studio where artists like The Beatles and Adele have recorded, adopted Flutter for their app development. Flutter’s ability to create beautiful and smooth user interfaces helps Abbey Road Studios provide a user-friendly experience for musicians and audio professionals using their app. |
Tech Stacks
- Flutter – Cross-platform application development SDK
- Dart – Programming language to code for Flutter SDK
- openapi-generator-cli – Generates Dart client repository from OpenAPI schema definition
- Firebase – Firebase console to track analytics, push notifications etc
- Google Play Services
- Google Cloud APIs
- Fastlane
- GitHub Actions
Libraries Flutter developers like to use
- firebase_messaging – Receiving push notifications.
- Firebase_analytics – Tracking app/custom events
- BLoC – Stream-based state management solution
- flutter_bloc – Library to integrate with BLoC to render widgets based on states
- hydrated_bloc – Same as BLoC but stores the last state in local/offline database
- list_bloc – A BLoC library for loading data from an API end-point with filtering and pagination.
- flutter_list_bloc – Library to integrate with list_bloc to render widgets based on states
- Openapi_repository – This package generates ListBloc and DataBloc using openapi_repository_annotations.
- Openapi_repository_annotations – Annotation to generate ListBloc and DataBloc.
- Progress_builder – A short-hand builder for performing simple asynchronous actions with progress/loading indications and built-in error handling.
- cached_network_image – Flutter library to load and cache network images.
- auto_route – AutoRoute is a declarative routing solution for Flutter
- djangoflow_app – Our in-house work-in-progress setup of a production-grade Flutter app.
- build_runner – A build system for Dart code generation and modular compilation.
- freezed – Code generator for data-classes/unions/pattern-matching/cloning.
- reactive_forms – This is a model-driven approach to handling Forms inputs and validations in Flutter, heavily inspired by Angular’s Reactive Forms.
- responsive_framework – Easily makes Flutter apps responsive.
- Icons_launcher – A command-line tool that simplifies the task of updating your Flutter app’s launcher icon.
- json_serializable – Automatically generate code for converting to and from JSON by annotating Dart classes.
- dio – A powerful HTTP client for Dart.
- flex_color_scheme – A Flutter package to use and make beautiful Material design-based themes.
- shimmer – A package provides an easy way to add shimmer effects in the Flutter project.
Code quality tools
- flutter_lints – Recommended lints for Flutter apps, packages, and plugins to encourage good coding practices.
- dart_code_metrics – Software analytics tool that helps developers analyze and improve software quality.
Dev tools
Design
- Material design guidelines
- Apple human interface guidelines
- Material Icons
- Cupertino Icons
- Figma design/flow
- Flutter Icon fonts generation
- Flutter theme playground
Blogs/news
Wrapping up
Flutter has constantly been expanded and there are many awesome packages out there. While this list is not exhaustive, we wanted to share the top tools that make our developers’ life much easier. We hope you enjoyed reading.
- TOP 12 Tech facts and history of creation and versions about Flutter Development
- TOP 10 Flutter Related Technologies
- What are top Flutter instruments and tools?
- How and where is Flutter used?
- Tech Stacks
- Libraries Flutter developers like to use
- Code quality tools
- Dev tools
- Design
- Blogs/news
- Wrapping up