Mobile app development has become one of the most in-demand skills in today’s technology-driven world. With the increasing usage of smartphones and the development of various applications, mobile app development is now a booming industry. Mobile apps provide users with on-the-go access to their favorite services and products, giving them the convenience and flexibility to access these services from any device.
The development of mobile applications requires expertise in coding and design. In order to build a successful mobile application, developers must have an understanding of the various platforms available for creating and distributing mobile apps, such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Different platforms require different coding languages in order to create a successful app.
To start developing a mobile app, the first step is to choose the right platform for developing mobile applications. There are several technologies available in the market for developing mobile applications such as Flutter, React Native, and many more. In this article, we will specifically take a look at Flutter which is one of the most famous mobile app development frameworks. So before starting with the complete roadmap to becoming a Flutter developer, so many questions will arise such as What is Flutter, Why to learn Flutter, What are its advantages of learning over other technologies, and many more. We will answer them one by one and take a look at the complete roadmap for becoming a successful Flutter Developer.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source mobile application development framework created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, Google Fuchsia, and the web. Flutter is written in the Dart programming language and uses the Skia graphics engine. Flutter was first announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2018 and has since become one of the most popular mobile application development frameworks in the world.
Why Flutter?
- Fast Development: Flutter comes with a feature named as hot reload which helps you to add features, and fix bugs faster by reloading your application in an emulator within seconds. Hot Reload allows developers to quickly make changes to their applications without having to restart the application. This feature reduces the time required for reloading the application on emulators.
- Beautiful UI: Flutter comes with built-in material design and Cupertino (iOS-flavour) widgets which provide rich UI with smooth scrolling and platform awareness. Flutter also provides a platform for developers to create their own custom widgets.
- Native Performance: Flutter has built-in support for material design and Cupertino widgets, which allows developers to create mobile applications that look native for both Android as well as iOS.
How to Learn Flutter?
Dart is a programming language that is used for developing Flutter mobile applications. We can create the UI and along with that add business logic for our applications using a Dart programming language. Dart is an easy-to-learn language. There are so many online tools and cosumentations provided on Dart’s official website. They will also provide an online editor where you can start practicing the Dart programming language.
Learning Resources
There are plenty of resources and videos available online and it’s confusing for developers where to start learning all the concepts. Initially, as a beginner, if you get overwhelmed with so many concepts then don’t be afraid and stop learning. Have patience, explore, and stay committed to it.
The best way to learn Flutter app development is to get started with doing baby projects and then slowly move towards doing some complex projects.
Flutter Roadmap [2024]
Start with the introduction to Flutter. Read some related blogs to it and research flutter-related things. For example, read blogs on Introduction to mobile app development using Flutter, What is the difference in developing mobile applications using Flutter and React Native, How to design beautiful UIs for mobile applications using Flutter, and many more. Make yourself motivated to learn Flutter development and start with building some small projects using Flutter. Practice developing flutter applications on a regular basis and try to cover one concept each day. Try to join communities of flutter developers, and attend online workshops and seminars which will help you clear your doubts and ask your queries to the senior developers.
1. Learn Programming
Before you start developing the applications using the Flutter framework, you should have a basic knowledge of any programming language and you are familiar with some basic concepts of programming such as OOP and others. If you are having a basic idea of developing mobile applications for natively for Android or iOS then developing the mobile applications using the Flutter framework will be a little easier for you. If you are new to programming, then you can start with the basics of Java and then you can move towards learning Dart programming language. For learning the Dart you can take a look at Dart Pad which will provide an online IDE for learning the concepts of Dart.
2) Learn the Concepts of Git
As a developer, you will be creating several projects while learning Flutter development so to keep track of your progress and your daily work you can host your projects on Git. This will help you to create your portfolio or an online presence to stand out from the crowd. As a developer, whether you are developing applications for any platform you should learn Git to host your projects online and create your portfolio.
3. Choosing Your IDE
Flutter applications can be developed in any of the below IDE (Integrated development environment)
- Android Studio
- Visual Studio Code
Both of the IDEs are having their own advantages and disadvantages while developing flutter mobile applications. I would recommend starting developing the Flutter applications using Android Studio, as it will also help you to explore android studio which will be beneficial when developing the native Android applications as well. For developing the flutter applications using android studio you have to simply install flutter plugins as well as install flutter SDK within your system.
4. Start with Building the UI
Flutter mobile framework is known for its beautiful UI and it comes with various different components which are as follows :
1) Widgets: Widgets are the basic building blocks of a Flutter app’s user interface. They are responsible for the visual components of an app, such as text, buttons, and images. Widgets can be combined to create complex layouts, and can also be used to create reusable components that can be used in multiple apps.
There are different types of widgets which are as follows :
- Stateless widget: Stateless widgets in Flutter are widgets that do not maintain any state. They do not have an internal state but instead rely solely on the properties given to them when being used. Stateless widgets are useful for creating static user interfaces, such as a header or footer of an application. They are also useful for displaying simple data, such as a list of names or an image.
- Stateful widget: Stateful widgets in Flutter are widgets that have mutable states. They are widgets that remember information or data about the user interaction with them. They are also capable of dynamically changing their appearance and/or behavior based on that interaction. Examples of stateful widgets include sliders, checkboxes, and text fields.
- Accessibility widgets: Accessibility widgets are widgets that allow developers to make their apps more accessible for people with disabilities. This includes widgets for screen readers, braille displays, and other forms of assistive technology. Examples include TextField, Switch, Checkbox, Slider, and more. These widgets are designed to be as intuitive as possible for users and make it easier for users with disabilities to navigate and interact with apps.
- Inherited widgets: Inherited widgets in Flutter are widgets that can be used to pass data down the widget tree, allowing children widgets to access the data of their parent widgets. They are useful for passing data to children widgets that are not in the same build tree, such as themes, localization, and more. Inherited widgets are also helpful when dealing with state management since they can be used to store the state in a widget and then easily access it from any descendant widget.
- Style widgets: Style widgets in Flutter are used to provide a consistent look and feel to UI elements across the application. These widgets provide common styling options such as text alignment, font size, font styles, colors, padding, and margins. They also provide options to create custom styles with custom properties and values. Examples of style widgets include Text, Container, Padding, decorated box, and Theme.
2) Assets: Assets in Flutter UI are the various resources needed to develop the UI of the application. These resources include images, fonts, audio, video, and other files. Assets can be used to create visually appealing designs and create a more immersive experience for the user. Additionally, assets can be used to build custom widgets and create a unique user interface.
5. Simple Static UI Design
Once you have got an idea of different widgets to be used in developing the Flutter application then you can take a look at the different static components which are used for developing the user interface of the application.
These static user interface design components are categorized as below :
- View Groups: View Groups are the group layout that is used to align the different child views in it in a specific manner whether in the horizontal or vertical pattern of the screen.
The different types of View Groups available in Flutter are as follows :
- View: View is an individual UI component in an Android application that is used to display images of text within the application. The different types of views are as follows :
- Complex and Dynamic UI Design: Once you have learned the simple static UI designing using text views, buttons, and others then you can start learning the complex UI designing such as displaying the data in the form of lists. There are several dynamic UI components which are as follows :
- Working with assets: Assets are the resources such as fonts, images, videos, and external media files which we can add to our application. For using these external assets we have to specify them in the pub spec.yaml file within our Flutter Project. There are so many types of assets that we can use within our application which are as follows :
8. Design Principles
To make the project more easy to manage and handle design principles should be followed while designing any flutter application. Following any other design principle will help you to manage the project and expand easily. There are several types of Design Principles that are followed while designing the Flutter applications which are as follows :
9. Working with APIS
APIs are widely used within Android applications to parse the data from a web server within an Android application. We can parse data in the JSON format with the help of APIs. There are different types of APIs that we can use within our Flutter application as follows
10. Package Manager
Package Manager in Flutter is generally used to manage the packages which can be used within a Flutter application. We can use it to manage the dependencies used within our application as well as publish our packages to it. We can use the pub get command to access different packages of Flutter.
11. Storage
In Flutter there are three different types of storage available where you can store data according to your requirements which are as follows :
12. Animations
In Flutter the UI of the mobile application can be made even more attractive by adding animations to it. There are various components available in Flutter that can be used to add animations in Flutter mobile application which are as follows :
- AnimatedWidget
- AnimatedBuilder
- Hero animation
- Opacity
- Curved Animation
- Animation Controller
13. Advanced Dart
Advanced Dart contains concepts of Dart which will allow you to write more efficient and maintainable dart code which will help you to maintain your flutter project easily.
Below are some of the concepts of advanced Dart which you can follow:
- Streams
- Futures
- Lambdas
- Lists
- Collections
- Isolates
- Functional Programming
14. Reactive Programming
Reactive Programming is a programming paradigm that can be used in Flutter applications to handle the changing data streams and update the UI on the basis of those changes. The reactive programming in Flutter can be achieved by using Streams, Futures, and Blocs.
RxDart Is a library in Flutter that can be used for working with reactive programming.
15. Flutter Dev Tools
Flutter DevTools is a set of tools provided by Flutter which is used to build, test and deploy Flutter applications easily. Below is the list of Flutter Dev Tools which you should definitely take a look at.
16. Using Third Party Libraries
- Networking
- Image Loading
- SQLite Database Integration
17. Behavioural Components
These are the different components of the applications which can be performed in the background as well as within the application and they are as follows :
- Permissions
- Push Notifications
- Download Manager
- Preferences
- Media Playback
18. State Management
State Management in Flutter is used to manage the state of the application for different screen sizes and changes in the orientation of the devices. Different state management techniques used are as follows:
- setState
- Provider
- Redux
- MobX
- Bloc
19. Architecture patterns to be followed while developing Flutter applications
20. Debugging of Flutter applications.
The most important skill of any developer is debugging the applications. There are several debugging techniques for debugging flutter applications which are as follows :
- Flutter Inspector
- Flutter Dev Tools
- Flutter Logging
- Flutter CLI
- Flutter Debugger
- Dart Observatory
21. Flutter Internals
Flutter Internal refers to the working of internal mechanisms and architecture which makes the Flutter framework. The different types of Flutter Internals that you should take a look at are as follows :
22. Firebase
23. Unit Testing
24. Native Integration and App release.
We can add native functionalities to our Flutter application. Flutter app release is done through the native platform only.
The steps for releasing native Android applications are as follows:
- Android Studio
- Native code integration using Java/Kotlin
- App signing
- Publishing it to the Google Play store
The steps for releasing native iOS applications are as follows :
- Xcode
- Native code integration using Swift/Objective C
- Apple Certification
- App Store
For a more detailed explanation of each topic you can also refer to: Flutter Tutorial – GFG
Useful links:
Conclusion
“Practice makes a man perfect” which tells the importance of continuous practice in any subject to learn anything. So keep practicing and read some Flutter-related tips such as Tips to Improve Your Flutter App Development Skills, Tips to Get Your Android App Featured on Google Play Store, etc.
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