This week in Flutter #8

Ever since I first watched this video from the Inkdrop developer Takuya Matsuyama, I wanted to try vim for Flutter. Robert Brunhage published a video on the topic, but I still have to find the right motivation (and time) to give it a try. If you have suggestions, comments, or even if you think I should not do it, please let me know.

- Michele Volpato

🧑‍💻 Development

Create a Simple Responsive GridView with Flutter

Alberto Bonacina shows us how to use flutter_staggered_grid_view to create a responsive grid of widgets, with an explanation of how the layout works.

Flutter Face Detection Using Firebase ML Kit

I have never used Firebase ML in an app. Apparently, it is quite simple. Follow this tutorial to implement face recognition in your app.

Flutter Package Preview: shared_preferences

Carl Wills is back with another introductory article to well-known Flutter packages. This time its shared_preferences.

Flutter GetX Example – Category Selection

Bart van Wezel is also back in this newsletter with an article about how to get started with GetX. There are so many state management packages for Flutter, I suggest you pick one and use that in all your projects. But it is good to know what’s available out there, in case you find a package that works better for you.

Dart Basics

A new article by the raywenderlich.com team, about Dart, updated to the recent sound null safety feature.

Flutter Drag and Drop – State Management

Bart van Wezel is back (again) with an article about integrating drag and drop with Riverpod. There is a lot of code in this tutorial, and also a common questions section at the end.

Dependency Injection with Flutter

Dependency injection is a well-known technique to achieve separation of concerns, make your code reusable, and testable. In Dart/Flutter you can apply it by architecting your code around it from the start (my preferred way), or you can use catalyst for Dart and [flutter_catalyst](https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_catalyst) for Flutter. Julian Finkler, the developer behind those packages, created a new package to make the process of using them easier. From the repository of [catalyst_builder](https://pub.dev/packages/catalyst_builder):

Catalyst Builder is a dependency injection provider builder for both, Dart and Flutter. It’s easy to use and dependency injection is almost done automatically. You only have to decorate your services with @Service and the build_runner will create a service provider for you.

🗄 Backend

Loading Cloud Storage Images in a Flutter Web App

Recently we adapted a Flutter mobile app we built for a client to the web. The app uses Firebase to host many images. In the mobile version, we cache the images in a folder on the device, using [path_provider](https://pub.dev/packages/path_provider), but on the web, this is not possible. My colleague Toine Heuvelmans explains in this article how we used hive and CORS configurations to achieve image caching on the web.

🤷‍♂️ Others

A Year as a Flutter Developer

Do you want to read the journey of a Flutter developer, from learning to getting their first full-time contract? Alistair Holmes, co-organizer of Flutter Zimbabwe, shares how he learned Flutter, shared his work, and got a full-time contract (and then a Lead Mobile Dev position) in less than a year. Kudos!

10 Best Visual Studio Code Extensions for Flutter Development

I do not know if these are actually the best extentions for Flutter development, but for sure they are useful. Suresh Mohan not only lists them, but he also shows how they work in this article.

Improving Platform Channel Performance in Flutter

The Flutter team has recently improved performance in communication between the Flutter framework and the host platform. In this article, they explain (in detail - you are warned) how they achieved that. Happy reading.

That’s it for this week.

If you want to comment on any of this week’s entries, you can do it in the comment section below.

Have a bug-free week,

- Michele Volpato