This week in Flutter #81: Dart 3 is coming

10 December 2022 — Newsletter

Soon Dart will drop support for unsound null safety. If you have been updating Dart versions and dependencies regularly, not much will change for you, probably.

In the article above, there is also a preview of a new feature that will be introduced during Flutter Forward: patterns. With patterns, you get multiple returns for a function, destructuring, and pattern matching over algebraic datatypes (switch over class types).

Much more will be possible, read more in the feature specification. It’s a long read, but worth it.

- Michele Volpato

Development 🧑‍💻

Supporting six platforms with two keyboards

by Brett Morgan

If your plan is to distribute a Flutter app on multiple platforms, like iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, and Windows, read why you might need at least a couple of different machines. Or use a trusted CI/CD service.

Building Games in Flutter with Flame: Getting Started

by Vincenzo Guzzi

Just yesterday I went to a MeetUp where I experimented with Flame under the supervision of Jochum van der Ploeg and Lukas Klingsbo. In this article, you do more than just experimenting, you create a game in the old RPG style.

Assertions In Dart And Flutter Tests: An Ultimate Cheat Sheet

by Anna Leushchenko

Read, and print, these cheatsheets about assertions for Flutter tests. A very comprehensive article.

Dart & Flutter with ChatGPT: Is it worth it?

by Andrea Bizzotto

Can ChatGPT be helpful for Flutter developers? In this article, you can see some applied examples. My opinion? I am impressed with some results and disappointed with others. If you are learnings the basics of Flutter, you should avoid it, so as to not get confused by the wrong answers.

Tools 🛠

Zapp! updates

Zapp! received a bunch of updates this week. Among them: Flutter 3.3.9, a faster compiler, a canvaskit renderer, Dart-only mode, a templates explorer, and easy preview on mobile via a QR code.

Backend 🗄

Go for Dart with Protocol Buffers

by Rui Craveiro

Dart can be used for server-side development, but integration with existing tools and frameworks is not expanding as quickly as the frontend side. You can use existing libraries in other programming languages via dart:ffi. In this case, using Go drivers to access MongoDB.

Others 🤷‍♂️

with Khanh Nguyen

NavigationBar is the Material 3 version of BottomNavigationBar.

Dart + Postgres - Observable Flutter

with Craig Labenz

This is part 2 of a live coding linked in a previous issue of this newsletter.

What we learned from the Flutter Q3 2022 survey

by JaYoung Lee

The results of the latest Flutter user survey about Firebase SDKs, quick fixes and refactoring, target platforms, and desktop support.

That’s it for this week.

If you want to comment on any of this week’s entries, you can do it in the comment section below.

Have a bug-free week,