Flutter for Beginners: An introductory guide to building cross-platform mobile applications with Flutter 2.5 and Dart

Cover
Title page
Copyright and credits
Foreword
Contributor
Table of contents
Preface
Section 1: Introduction to Dart
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Flutter
	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 2: An Introduction to Dart
	Technical requirements
	Getting started with Dart
		The evolution of Dart
		How Dart works
		Introducing the structure of the Dart language
		Hands-on with Dart
	Variables and data types
		Variable declaration
		Null safety
		Built-in types
	Control flows and looping
		If/else
		While and do-while loops
		For loops
		break and continue
		Hands-on continued
	Functions and methods
		Function parameters
	Summary
Chapter 3: Flutter versus Other Frameworks
	Native development
		Developers
		Project management
		Defect reports
		Performance
		Platform features
		Hot reload
		User experience
		App size
		New platforms
		Retired platforms
		Overview
	Cross-platform frameworks
		React Native
		Xamarin
		Cordova
		Popularity
	Flutter community
		Events
		News and discussion
		Resources
	Flutter strengths and weaknesses
		Strengths
		Weaknesses
	Summary
Chapter 4: Dart Classes and Constructs
	Technical requirements
	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
Section 2: The Flutter User Interface – Everything Is a Widget
Chapter 5: Widgets – Building Layouts in Flutter
	Technical requirements
	Stateful/stateless widgets
		Stateless widgets
		Stateful widgets
		Inherited widgets
		The widget key property
	Built-in widgets
		Basic widgets
		Material Design and iOS Cupertino widgets
		Layouts
	Streams
	Summary
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 a controller
		FormField and TextField
		Accessing the FormField widget's state
		Form
	Custom input and FormField widgets
		Creating custom inputs
		Custom input widget example
	Summary
Chapter 7: 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
Section 3: Developing Fully Featured Apps
Chapter 8: Plugins – What Are They and How Do I Use Them?
	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
Chapter 9: 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 Firebase 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
Chapter 10: 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
Section 4: Testing and App Release
Chapter 11: Testing and Debugging
	Technical requirements
	Unit testing
		The Dart test package
		Writing unit tests
		Unit test mocking
	Widget testing
		The flutter_test package
		Widget test example
		Running a widget test
	Debugging your app
		Observatory
		Additional debugging features
		Debugging in the IDE
	DevTools
		The widget inspector
		Profile mode
	Summary
Chapter 12: Releasing Your App to the World
	Technical requirements
		Preparing the stores
		Preparing for web
	Releasing your app on Android
		AndroidManifest and build.gradle
		Build and upload your appbundle
	Releasing your app on iOS
		App Store Connect
		Xcode
		Build and upload
	Releasing your app on the web
		Firebase hosting
		PWA support
	Tracking app usage and crashes
		Crashlytics
		Google Analytics
	Summary
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Index