Hello Everyone,
This is my first blog post ever. I am going to blog my entire journey of Flutter development from a beginner to end. I will be explaining what ever I learn.
Why Flutter? I choose flutter because its a single code base and cross platform compatible. We also have alternatives like react native & Ionic. Flutter is pretty fast as it compiles to native code for cross platforms.
What is Flutter? Tool that allows to create native cross platform applications with one programming language(dart) and code base.
Flutter SDK(Software Development Kit) The Flutter SDK compiles the code to native machine code which will run in cross platforms.
We can also create web applications and desktop applications with Flutter. So, its a simple one framework which targets all the platforms. We need to go behind every framework or language
Everything is widgets in Flutter. We will learn about widgets in the coming blogs .
In simple words Flutter is a framework which uses dart language to build wonderful mobile , web & desktop applications.
Lets do our windows setup for running our simple Flutter App.
We need to install Flutter first. Check out this link and download the flutter zip file for windows.
https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install/windows
Unzip the the file and place the Flutter folder anywhere in users directory in your desktop.
We need to setup the environment variable . For that search for environment variable open that you will find the environment variable in the bottom click on that Edit the path variable and add new, copy the Flutter bin directory path and paste it and save it
We have successfully added the environment variable. Now we need to check the flutter is working or not.
Open the cmd and run the command
flutter
If there is no error then Flutter is successfully installed.
In order to run Flutter we need to install
git
android studio (with android SDK command-line tools) visual studio code (optional) with Flutter and dart extensions
We need an android emulator to run our Flutter app locally or else we can use our own android mobile with debug mode on and connect through USB to the desktop. For running app in physical device we need to install
Google USB Driver
which is found in SDK manager in android studio.
To check our physical device is connected , We can run the below command in cmd
flutter devices
We need to agree android license by running the below command.
flutter doctor --android-licenses
Click 'y' for all
We need to check if the system is ready for running a Flutter app. Run the below command to check that
flutter doctor
If any error is thrown , You can check the Flutter documentation
Now we will create our own simple Flutter app.
You can connect your mobile device or use android emulator
Open cmd and choose your project directory with 'cd ' command and run the below command to create your Flutter app
flutter create app_name
It will create a folder with the name and you can open it in any code editor . I am using VS code with both flutter and dart extensions installed.
In VS code open the terminal run the below command it will take some time to build and you will get your new Flutter App.
flutter run
If it throws a java or kotlin error . Please make sure have the latest jdk istalled.
Ola we have our Flutter App running...
Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment your feedback.