Introduction to Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit (SDK) created by Google. It is used for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Flutter allows developers to use a single codebase to create beautiful and high-performance applications across multiple platforms.

How Does it Compare to React? (Similarities)

UI Components:
Both Flutter and React follow a component-based architecture, promoting code reusability and modularity, and allowing for building complex interfaces through composition.

Cross-Platform Development:
Both frameworks support building applications across multiple platforms, covering iOS, Android, and web platforms, enabling code sharing and reducing development effort.

Differences

Flutter:
- Employs immediate mode rendering, rendering directly onto the canvas.
- Integrates with native features through platform channels.
- Used by companies like Alibaba, Google Ads, and Tencent.

React:
- Utilizes virtual DOM rendering, updating a lightweight in-memory representation before applying changes to the actual DOM.
- Relies on libraries and APIs for native feature integration.
- Favored by tech giants like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Stateful Widgets

Stateful widgets are a crucial concept in Flutter, allowing you to manage mutable state within your user interface. Unlike stateless widgets, which are static and immutable once built, stateful widgets can change their state over time in response to user interactions, network requests, animations, or other factors.

Dive Deep on Stateful Widgets

1. Stateful Widgets:
A stateful widget is a widget that can change its appearance based on state changes. It consists of two classes: the widget itself and its corresponding state class.

2. State Class:
The state class is responsible for managing the mutable state of the widget. It extends the State class, which is generic and takes the corresponding widget type as a parameter. The state class contains the mutable data and methods to update the widget's appearance.

3. setState() Method:
To update the state of a stateful widget, you call the setState() method provided by the State class. The setState() method triggers a rebuild of the widget, causing the build() method to be called again with the updated state.

Stateless Widget

Stateless widgets, as the name suggests, are widgets in Flutter that do not have any mutable state. Once built, they remain unchanged and cannot be directly updated. Stateless widgets extend the StatelessWidget class and override the build() method to describe the widget's UI based on its configuration.

Use Cases:
Stateless widgets are ideal for displaying static content such as text, images, icons, and simple UI components. They are commonly used for presentational purposes within Flutter applications.

BLOC (Business Logic Component)

BLoC is a design pattern introduced by Google, which helps in managing state and handling events in Flutter applications. It promotes separation of concerns by separating the business logic from the UI layer.

How BLoC Works

BLoCs typically use streams or sinks to communicate changes in state to the UI layer. Streams represent a sequence of asynchronous events, while sinks are used to send events to a stream. BLoC architecture promotes separation of concerns by separating UI components from business logic.

UI components, such as widgets, are responsible for rendering the UI based on the state provided by BLoCs. BLoCs handle business logic, such as fetching data from APIs, processing user inputs, and managing application state.

Use Cases

BLoC architecture is suitable for medium to large-scale Flutter applications where managing state becomes complex. It is especially useful for applications with asynchronous data fetching, complex UI interactions, or stateful components.