Flutter : From Zero To Comfortable

Flutter is a mobile App SDK by Google which helps in creating modern mobile apps for iOS and Android using a single(almost) code base. It’s a new entrant in the cross platform mobile application development and unlike other frameworks like React Native, it doesn’t use JavaScript as a Programming Language.

The programming language used by flutter is DART , which is similar to JavaScript in a way that it also runs a single threaded event queue. The biggest benefit of using Flutter is that it directly generates the ARM binaries which will execute directly on the native platform running it faster.

JavaScript based frameworks like “React Native” needs a bridge which converts the JavaScript code to Native Code which adds an additional layer of indirection.

The installation instructions are present HERE. Both “Android Studio” and “IntelliJ IDEA Community” edition can be used to develop flutter applications.

Creating Flutter Apps — The Hierarchical Widgets

Everything within a Flutter application is a Widget in Flutter, from a simple “Text” to “Buttons” to “Screen Layouts”.

These widgets arrange in a hierarchical order to be displayed onto the screen. The widgets which can hold widgets inside it are called Container Widget. Most of the layout widgets are container widgets except for the widgets which does a minimal job like “Text Widget”

A bare minimal arrangement of widgets shall look like

Hello Flutter : The first Flutter Code

With our first code, we’ll be displaying “Hello Flutter” on our Mobile App. We’ll use Container Widget called Directionality and Text Widget called Text to display the text onto the screen. Here is how the code looks like

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
void main() => runApp(new MyApp());
class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext ctxt) {
    return new Directionality(
        textDirection…