How to

A Beginner’s Guide to Firebase Authentication in Flutter

Flutter is a powerful tool when it comes to cross-platform app development. It focuses on delivering an ultimate development experience with its cutting-edge features and reliable coding mechanism. Flutter uses Dart language to write the code for building apps. Dart is a client-oriented programming language that offers to build fast apps for multiple platforms. Many developers leverage this technology to build highly responsive, easy-to-use, and scalable mobile, web, and desktop apps. App development with Flutter becomes more productive when we add firebase to it. In this article, we are going to know everything about firebase authentication. Related Post – using dart enum in flutter What is Firebase Authentication? Flutter User authentication is one of the most important considerations in app development. Any app must know the identity of a user. Knowing a user’s identity allows an app to save user data in the cloud safely. In addition, it provides the same personalized experience across all of the user’s devices. Firebase Authentication provides several useful operations. To authenticate users to your app, Firebase authentication provides services like backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries. It usually authenticates users with the help of passwords, phone numbers, and some popular federated identity providers like Google, Facebook and Twitter, and more. Firebase Authentication firmly integrates with other Firebase services leveraging industry standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect. So you can easily integrate it with your custom backend. Get Started with Firebase Authentication Firstly, you need to get authentication credentials from the users to sign them into your app. Commonly, these credentials can be the user’s email address and password. Or, it could be an OAuth token from a federated identity provider. After all, you pass these credentials to the Firebase Authentication SDK. Then the backend services of Firebase verify those credentials and return a response to the client. You can access the user’s basic profile information when you successfully sign in. Moreover, you can also control the user’s access to data that is stored in other Firebase products. Also, you can use the provided authentication token to verify the identity of users in your own backend services. Before moving further, go through the quick guide of how to integrate Firebase with Flutter app. It is the first and foremost step to learning firebase authentication. Different Ways to Implement Firebase Authentication There are two basic approaches with which we can implement firebase authentication. And these are as follows: FirebaseUI Auth FirebaseUI Auth involves three basic steps to authenticate a user and these are discussed below. You can enable email address and password or phone number sign-in and any federated identity providers you want to support from the Firebase console. Furthermore, complete any configuration required by the identity provider, like setting your OAuth redirect URL. You can customize the user sign-in UI with the help of different FirebaseUI options. You can also fork the code on GitHub and make the possible changes to customize the sign-in experience further. Import the FirebaseUI library. After that, specify the sign-in methods you want to support and initiate the FirebaseUI sign-in flow. Firebase Authentication SDK It has the same procedure for email, password, or phone number sign-in and any identity providers you want to support. You need to enable them in the Firebase console and complete any configuration required by the identity provider, such as setting your OAuth redirect URL. We need to implement a flow that prompts users to enter their credentials for the email address and password sign-in. Similarly, for phone number sign-in, create a flow that prompts users for their phone number. Afterward, ask for the code from the SMS message they receive. For federated sign-in, implement the flow that each provider requires. After implementing UI flows, you have to pass the user’s email address and password or the OAuth token. What’s Next? This is it for a basic guide to Firebase authentication. For further information about integration guides for all other sign-in providers, head over to Firebase Authentication where to start. After all, if you have any queries or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below. FlutterDesk team would be happy to be of help.

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How to Add a Border to a Container in Flutter

How to Add a Border to a Container in Flutter

During flutter app development, you have to use a lot of widgets. These widgets could be text, row, columns, stack, and containers. Sometimes you might need to add a border to a container widget to create a UI box like a button, key, or card. Borders help to organize content, draw attention to specific parts of the UI, and enhance the overall aesthetic. In this practical guide, we are going to learn how to add a border to a container in Flutter. You can simply add borders to container flutter by applying the BoxDecoration class. I will be giving you an example with a code to add borders to containers in Flutter. Moreover, you can change the border’s width, height, color, or radius. You can also add a border to only one or more than one side of the container. Such as only the left side of the container or only the top and bottom of the container, etc. What You Need to Know About Flutter Containers and BoxDecoration In Flutter, the Container widget is one of the most versatile widgets, often used as a building block for more complex UIs. The BoxDecoration class provides customization options that can be applied to containers to add styles like borders, shadows, background colors, gradients, and more. This allows you to create unique, customized elements in your app’s interface. Why Add Borders to Containers in Flutter? Adding borders to containers serves both functional and aesthetic purposes. Borders can: Highlight specific parts of the app, such as buttons or active items. Create distinct sections in a list or layout. Enhance the visual design by adding style and structure to the UI. Help achieve consistency across different widgets or screens in an app. Add Border to Containers To add a border to a container in flutter is not a big deal. You just need to wrap a widget in a container and add BoxDecoration class to it as in the code below. Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( border: Border.all( width: 5, color: Colors.black, ), ), ), As you can see there are some defined parameters like width, height, and colors. You can change the values of these parameters and put them according to your needs. Customizing the Border Color You can use different colors to create visually appealing borders. Flutter provides a wide range of color options in the Colors class, such as Colors.blue, Colors.red, and even custom color values using Color(0xFF000000). Here’s an example: Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( border: Border.all( width: 3, color: Colors.blueAccent, ), ), ), In this example, the border is blue with a thickness of 3 pixels. You can customize the border to match your app’s color scheme or design preferences. Changing Border Thickness The width parameter in Border.all allows you to adjust the thickness of the border. The default thickness is 1.0, but you can set it to any value. Here’s how to change the border thickness: Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( border: Border.all( width: 8, // Adjust the thickness as desired color: Colors.green, ), ), ), By setting width: 8, the border is now thicker and more prominent. Adding Rounded Corners to Borders To create a rounded border, use the borderRadius property in BoxDecoration. This is particularly useful when creating buttons or cards. Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( color: Colors.white, border: Border.all(color: Colors.red, width: 3), borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(15), // Radius for rounded corners ), ), With BorderRadius.circular(15), the container now has rounded corners, giving it a softer, more polished look. Add Border to Specific Sides of Container As discussed earlier, you can add borders to specific sides of a container in Flutter. You just need to specify the side to which you want to add borders and the rest of the code will be the same as above. You can also use the code given below to add a border to a specific side of a container. Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( border: Border( left: BorderSide(color: Colors.yellow, width: 6), top: BorderSide(color: Colors.pink, width: 10), ), ), ), In this code, the border is applied only to the left and top sides of the container, using different colors and thicknesses for each side. Add Borders to Symmetrical Sides of a Container You can also add borders to the symmetrical side of a container. The side may be symmetrical vertically or horizontally. Use the code given below to add a border to the symmetrical side of a container. Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( border: Border.symmetric( horizontal: BorderSide(color: Colors.grey, width: 2), vertical: BorderSide(color: Colors.purple, width: 7), ), ), ), With Border.symmetric, you can apply borders to symmetrical sides, making the container visually balanced Adding Dashed or Dotted Borders While Flutter doesn’t have built-in support for dashed or dotted borders, you can achieve this effect by using third-party packages like flutter_dash. Here’s an example using the dotted_border package, which you’ll need to add to your pubspec.yaml file. dependencies: dotted_border: ^2.0.0 Once you have the package, you can use it as follows: import ‘package:dotted_border/dotted_border.dart’; DottedBorder( color: Colors.red, dashPattern: [6, 3], strokeWidth: 2, child: Container( width: 150, height: 150, color: Colors.white, ), ), This code will create a dotted red border around the container. You can adjust dashPattern to control the length and spacing of the dots or dashes. Adding Shadows to Borders in Flutter Adding shadows to borders can give your containers a 3D effect, making them look more prominent on the screen. Use the boxShadow property in BoxDecoration to achieve this effect. Container( width: 150, height: 150, decoration: BoxDecoration( color: Colors.white, border: Border.all(color: Colors.black, width: 2), borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(10), boxShadow: [ BoxShadow( color: Colors.grey.withOpacity(0.5), spreadRadius: 3, blurRadius: 5, offset: Offset(0, 3), ), ], ), ), The boxShadow property adds a subtle shadow to the container, enhancing its depth and making it stand out. Using Gradient Borders in Flutter Flutter doesn’t directly support gradient borders, but you can create the effect by layering widgets. Here’s how to create a gradient border using

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How to Add Borders to TextField in Flutter

TextField in Flutter is a text input widget that is most commonly used to collect inputs from users. We can the input either from a hardware keyboard or an on-screen keyboard. We can use the TextField widget in different forms like building forms, sending messages, creating search experiences, and many more. Flutter TextField allows different kinds of customizations like styling and alignment of the text as well as the cursor inside the TextField. Adding borders to TextField in Flutter is also a major concern of developers while building an app. Delivering the best user experience to end-users is always the utmost priority of developers as well as enterprises. In order to accomplish that, you need to value several aspects of building a user-friendly app. Adding borders to TextField in Flutter You can add borders to TextField in Flutter to make your UI more interactive. Making each and every field prominent that is present on your screen is the only way to make your app user-friendly. A TextField in any flutter app usually requires a hint text and a label. Let’s move towards the code to add borders to TextField in Flutter. Related Post – How to change text color in flutter? Screenshots of the Output As you can see, we have declared the label as “Name”. And you can see, the text field is showing “Name” as the label. Additionally, we defined the border color as gray and its circular radius as “10”. All the results are displayed accordingly in the code. Furthermore, we declared the hint text as “Enter your name”. We declared its color as black, width as “2” and circular radius as 15. As you can see in the screenshot above, the label moves upwards and the hint text displays. It has a border around it with an increased width and circular radius representing what to write in the field. Moreover, if there exists any error in the TextField flutter, the border will change its color to red. Conclusion Thus, you might become aware of the importance of adding borders to TextFields in Flutter after going through this article. We hope this blog helps you one way or the other. Furthermore, if you have any questions or suggestions, you can leave a comment below. Also, you can hire a flutter developer to discuss your ideas related to flutter app development.

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How to implement a dropdown list in flutter?

A dropdown button is a widget that helps users to select a value or an option from a set of values. The dropdown list is an important element in an app that increases the ease of the users using the app. In this article, we are going to learn how to implement a dropdown list in Flutter. For example, you have a form with city selection. There are two widgets that you can use to show those city details. One option is using the radio button, which allows for selecting a single value. The other option is to use DropDownButton. In scenarios like this, using a dropdown widget will be the best option. This is because you can add a large list of cities. And when the user selects a city, it will show only that selected city in particular. So, it is much more likely to provide a better user experience to the end-user. Code to Add DropDown Button in Flutter Screenshots of Results

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How to Store Data in Firebase Cloud Firestore Using Flutter App

In the recent article, we gave you a complete guide on how to integrate firebase with your Android, iOS, and Web flutter apps. Before we move on, you should give it a look. If you know how to do that, let’s move forward to learn how to store data in the cloud firestore for flutter apps. In mobile app development, storing and saving users’ data is the most important part of your app. You can save data in different ways using cloud firestore. You can either save the data locally, which means that you can’t share it with others, or save it permanently. So If you want to share your data, you need to save it in the cloud. One of the easiest solutions to this problem is Google’s Cloud Firestore database. Cloud Firestore is a flexible and scalable NoSQL-style database. It is the best approach for small-sized projects to store and sync data for client and server-side development. Unlike traditional databases that require a lot of work to insert data, Firestore lets you save JSON blobs to collections. This method doesn’t limit you to structure your data and allows you to change it at any time. Creating Firestore Database After that, you’re done creating the project and integrating it with the flutter app, now it’s time to create the Firestore database. For this purpose, click on the Firestore database option appearing in the left navigation menu bar on the firebase homepage. As shown here: The cloud firebase window will appear. Click on the “Create database” button. See here: As you click on the create database, a new popup window will appear asking you to choose production mode or test mode. Now the question is which one to choose? The production mode has increased security which requires a series of steps to consider. You won’t be able to handle the requests or the errors if you’re not ready for them. So we choose test mode which you can alternatively call debug mode. In this mode, you can make changes, remove errors, etc. We are moving on with test mode. As I said earlier, you can choose production mode if you’re ready for it. No enforcement. 😛 When you select a mode, the next step is to state the location where you want to create the database. There are different locations to choose from. By clicking on the Cloud Firestore location dropdown, you’ll be able to choose a multi-regional or regional location. You can choose the location according to your requirements or that is closest to your location and then click ‘enable’. As you click enable, the Firebase will provision your Cloud Firestore database and you will be ready to use the database and perform what we are here for. The database console page is shown in the figure below: Collections and Documents in NoSQL A NoSQL database is made up of collections that contain documents in it. A document basically contains the fields that you plan to store, fields being the information or the parameters. You can add collections using simple steps. Let me give you a quick go-through of it. Click on “start collection” in the Cloud Firebase console. A new “start a collection” popup will appear. Enter a collection ID, which is a set of documents that contain data. Then click next. But It will require a document ID that denotes a particular set of data. And then you have to enter different fields like the name, age, or height of a person. We are going to have a coding approach using the flutter app that we integrated with firebase. Add, Update, Delete or Fetch Documents in Firestore Using Flutter App In contrary to storing data in firestore through the console, you can also store data in firestore using the flutter app.To accomplish this task, firstly, you need to create a model to store the data. But here, we are storing users’ data like name, age, etc. Creating a model To organize the data of users, we need to create a model from which we can access the data of an individual or everyone present in the model. So the code to create a model in the flutter app is given below. class UserModel{   UserModel({     required this.name,     required this.phone,     required this.age,   });     String name;   String phone;   int age;   Map<String, dynamic> toJson() => <String, dynamic>{         ‘name’: name,         ‘phone’: phone,         ‘age’: age,       };     factory UserModel.fromJson(Map<String, dynamic> json) => UserModel(     name: json[‘name’] as String,     phone: json[‘phone’] as String,     age: json[‘age’] as int,   ); } Add a Document So you can add a document in firestore using the flutter app with the code given below. Future<UserModel> insertFirestore(UserModel model) async {   try {     final document = await FirebaseFirestore.instance         .collection(collectionName)         .add(model.toJson());     model.id = document.id;     return model;   } catch (e) {     rethrow;   } } Update the Document You can update an existing document in firestore using the code as follows. Future updateFirestore(UserModel model) async {   try {     await FirebaseFirestore.instance         .collection(collectionName)         .doc(model.id)         .update(model.toJson());   } catch (e) {     rethrow;   } } Delete a Document But If you want to delete any document in firestore, you can use the code given below. Future deleteFirestore(String documentId) async {   try {     await FirebaseFirestore.instance         .collection(collectionName)         .doc(documentId)         .delete();   } catch (e) {     rethrow;   } } Fetch a Document You can also fetch the data stored in a particular document in Firestore using the flutter app. Just use the code given below. Future<UserModel> fetchOneFirestore(String id) async {   try {     return parseModel(await FirebaseFirestore.instance         .collection(collectionName)         .doc(id)         .get());   } catch (_) {     rethrow;   } } Fetch all Documents You can also fetch all the documents stored in Firestore. Future<List<UserModel>> fetchAll() async {   try {     final _data =         await FirebaseFirestore.instance.collection(collectionName).get();     return _data.docs.map((document) => UserModel.fromJson(document.data())).toList();

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What Is FlutterFlow? A Practical Guide to Design Flutter Apps of the Future

You must be familiar with the flutter framework; an application development platform that has transformed the way of building mobile, web, and desktop apps. Nowadays, many businesses rely on the Flutter framework to build beautiful, scalable, and responsive apps. With the release of FlutterFlow, things have now been easier. Owing to this, designing platforms have also tightened their belts to compete for the best design features. The release of FlutterFlow has surprised the whole community with its amazing and easy-to-use features. There are different platforms available that offer designing UI/UX for your apps. But FlutterFlow overcomes all of them due to its obvious features which we will be discussing shortly. Let’s move towards knowing what is Flutter Flow? Its features, Pricing, Resources, and much more. What is FlutterFlow? FlutterFlow is an online low-code visual builder for native mobile applications. You can create beautiful interfaces, dynamic apps, user-generated content apps, business apps, and much more. FlutterFlow was released back in late 2021, especially for the Flutter framework. It was developed by two former Google engineers as a third-party visual app builder. As discussed earlier, FlutterFlow has a drag & drop feature which allows you to build elegant custom applications within an hour. Let’s move towards some more exciting features of Flutter Flow. Features of FlutterFlow

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What is Dio in Flutter? Best Practices to Handle Networking in Flutter

During application development, managing network requests could be one of the hectic tasks for you. If you managed the network requests efficiently, your app is likely going to succeed in the market. Responses returned by a network may contain unexpected results, and in order to have a better user experience, you need to take care of such snags in advance. In this article, we are going to get familiar with Dio in Flutter. When you start working on a large application, you need to do something more advanced. Your application will face lots of problems with network handling. In that case, we need some advanced connection library that has extra features like interceptors, logs, cache, etc. that will be helpful in many tasks like adding the token authentication for each request and logging requests. In this article, we’re going to learn about Dio and have a look at the best practices for handling networking in Flutter. you can also hire a flutter developer for this task. What is Dio in Flutter? Dio is a powerful HTTP client for Dart. It supports interceptors, global configuration, FormData, request cancellation, file downloading, and timeout, among others. Flutter offers an HTTP package that’s good for performing basic network tasks but is pretty intimidating to use when handling some advanced features. If we compare the HTTP package with Dio, Dio provides an intuitive API for performing advanced networking tasks with minimal effort. The normal HTTP library can do the things which dio does and we get it in flutter SDK too. But it’s not that easy to learn or understand the http library so dio would be better. Related Topic – How to add Firebase project in Flutter app Get Started with Dio To get started with Dio, we first need to add dependencies. dependencies:dio: ^3.0.8 Then install the package using the command line in your terminal and import it: To install the package:  flutter pub get Or pub get Now use this in your dart code: import ‘package:dio/dio.dart’; GET Request To use methods of the Dio HTTP client, we have to create an instance of the Dio client. After that, we can call all methods of Dio. As you can see in the code below, we have created an instance of Dio to call GET requests. Future<dynamic> getData() async {     try {       Response response;       var dio = Dio();       /// apiUrl is basically the route from where you get data       response = await dio.get(‘$apiUrl/persons’);       debugPrint(response.data.toString());     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } POST Request The instance of Dio provides a POST method by which we can pass param in JSON format. After getting the request using the Dio instance, await for the request you want to post. Future postData() async {     try {       Response response;       var dio = Dio();       /// apiUrl is basically the route from where you get data       response = await dio.post(‘$apiUrl/persons’, data: {         ‘name’: ‘xyz’,         ‘age’: ’22’,         ‘gender’: ‘Male’,       });       debugPrint(response.data.toString());     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } Multiple Concurrent Requests When you need to call different APIs in the same instance of time it tends to get confusing a lot. At that time, we can use dio to get the responses from different APIs. Future multipleConcurrentRequests() async {     var dio = Dio();     try {       List<Response> response = await Future.wait(         [           dio.post(‘$apiUrl/persons’),           dio.get(‘/token’),         ],       );     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } To Download a File from Server To download a file from the server, Dio provides a download method. In this method, we have to pass the complete path of the file. Future downloadingFile() async {     Response response;     var dio = Dio();     try {       response = await dio.download(‘https://www.google.com/’, ‘./xx.html’);       return response.data;     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } Get Response Stream With the help of stream response, we can receive a sequence of events. To get a response stream with the Dio client, we need to set responseType stream. Future responseStream() async {     try {       Response<ResponseBody> responseBody;       responseBody = await Dio().get<ResponseBody>(         /// apiUrl is basically your url         apiUrl,         options: Options(           responseType: ResponseType.stream,         ),       );     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } Get Response with Bytes To get a response in bytes, we have to set responseType to ‘bytes’. As you can see: Future responseBtyes() async {     try {       Response<List<int>> response;       response = await Dio().get<List<int>>(         /// apiUrl is basically your url         apiUrl,         options: Options(responseType: ResponseType.bytes),       );     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } Send FormData To send the FormData, we use the instance FormData from the map and specify where we want to send the data and wait for the post. Future sendingFormData() async {     var dio = Dio();     try {       var formData = FormData.fromMap({         ‘name’: ‘xyz’,         ‘age’: 25,       });       /// apiUrl is basically your url       await dio.post(apiUrl, data: formData);     } catch (_) {       rethrow;     }   } Upload Multiple Files to Server by FormData When you need to upload multiple files to the server by your formData, at that time you can use MultiPartFile. And then awaiting for it step by step and vice versa can reduce your valuable time. Additionally, we can pass the required param with the same request. Future uploadingMultipleFiles(File file) async {     var dio = Dio();     try {       var formData = FormData.fromMap(         {           ‘name’: ‘xyz’,           ‘age’: 25,           ‘file’: await MultipartFile.fromFile(             file.path,             filename: ‘upload.txt’,           ),           ‘files’: [             await MultipartFile.fromFile(‘./text1.txt’, filename: ‘text1.txt’),             await MultipartFile.fromFile(‘./text2.txt’, filename: ‘text2.txt’),           ]         },       );       /// apiUrl is basically your url       var response = await dio.post(apiUrl, data: formData);       return response;     } catch

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Top 15 Flutter Interview Questions and Answers You Must Know

Flutter interview questions for senior developers and answers have been one of the hot topics in cross-platform application development. As a developer or even a beginner, you need to be aware of certain interview questions that could be asked. Originally developed by Google, Flutter is an open-source framework that offers a fast, productive, and reliable application development experience for all digital platforms. Flutter has gained a lot of popularity in a very short period. Developers love to choose flutter over any other platform because of its independence and simplicity, unlike other platforms. Flutter is the only framework that allows building Android and iOS apps without making any changes to the code. Flutter Interview Questions and Answers (All about Flutter and Dart)

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