Custom Event listeners in flutter - flutter

I have a widget with a list and a button with a tree dot icon in every row that shows and hides a panel in its own row. I only want one panel open in the list. When I click on a row button, I'd like to close the panels of the other rows list.  All the buttons in the list are siblings. I'd like to send an event to the other rows' code to close the panels. Which is the correct manner of flutter?  
I have tried NotificationListener but it does not work because the components to be notified are not their parents.
The question is if the correct thing to do is to use the event_listener library or to use streams. I'm new to flutter/dart and streams seem too complex to me. It's a very simple use case and in this entry
Flutter: Stream<Null> is allowed?
they say
*
Some peoples use streams as a flux of events instead of a value
changing over time, but the class isn't designed with this in mind.
They typically try to represent the following method as a stream:
So with simple events with 0 or 1 argument. event_listener or Streams?
This is the screen I'm working on. I want that when one yellow button panel opens the other one closes.

Your question is broad and it seems to be a design question, i.e. it doesn't have a right answer.
However, I don't think you should use Streams or EventListeners at all in this case, because you should not make components in the same layer communicate with each other. Components should only communicate with their parents and children, otherwise your code will increase in complexity really fast. That's even documented in flutter_bloc.
Other than that, if you don't lift state up, i.e. move the responsibility of triggering the removal of the other rows to a parent Widget, than you're fighting against Flutter instead of letting it help you.
It's easy to create a parent Widget, just wrap one Widget around it. What you want to do is hard, so why would try to communicate with sibling widgets instead of using what's Flutter designed to do?
This is a suggestion:
class _NewsSectionState extends State<NewsSection> {
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return ListView.builder(
itemCount: newsInSection.length;
itemBuilder: (_, int index) => NewsTile(
title: Text('${newsInSection[index].title}')
onDismiss: () => onDismiss(index),
// I don't know how you set this up,
// but () => onDismiss(Index)
// should animate the dismiss of the Row with said index
),
);
}
}
class NewsRow extends StatefulWidget {
final void Function() onDismiss;
#override
State<NewsRow> _createState => _NewsRowState();
}
class _NewsRowState extends State<NewsRow> {
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Row(
children: [
// title
// home button
// fav button
// remove button
IconButton(
Icons.close,
onPressed: widget.onDismiss,
),
],
);
}
}

Related

How do I keep my widget state when reordering them via Draggable&DragTarget?

I'm using this reorderables package. This package works by having a list of children widgets that are each wrapped with a Draggable and put inside a DragTarget. Before that the childs key is assigned to a GlobalObjectKey.
After the dragTarget is created, it is assigned(or rebuild?) to a KeyedSubTree:
dragTarget = KeyedSubtree(key: keyIndexGlobalKey, child: dragTarget);
According to the comments in the package source code, this should preserve the child widgets state (toWrap) when being dragged:
// We pass the toWrapWithGlobalKey into the Draggable so that when a list
// item gets dragged, the accessibility framework can preserve the selected
// state of the dragging item.
final GlobalObjectKey keyIndexGlobalKey = GlobalObjectKey(toWrap.key);
The reordering itself happens not with the DragTarget accepting the Draggable dragged into it, but rather by using the DragTarget around each child to get index of the current position the Draggable is hovering over. When the Draggable is let go, a reorder function will get called, which removes the widget (that was being dragged) from the list and inserting it into the new position.
Now comes my problem: The state of the widget is not being preserved. I made a simple TestWidget to test this:
class TestWidget extends StatefulWidget{
#override
_TestWidgetState createState() => _TestWidgetState();
}
class _TestWidgetState extends State<TestWidget> {
Color boxColor;
#override
void initState() {
super.initState();
boxColor= Colors.blue;
}
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Column(
children: [
Container(
decoration: BoxDecoration(color: boxColor),
child: Text("Test"),
),
FlatButton(
onPressed: (){
setState(() {
boxColor = Colors.red;
});
},
padding: EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
child: Text("Change to Red"),
color: Colors.grey,
)
],
);
}
}
This widget has a Container with a initial blue background (boxColor) and a button. When the button is pressed, it will change the boxColor to red. The moment the dragging on the widget is initiated, it is rebuild and defaults to the initial state (at least the Draggable feedback is). After the reordering that doesn't change and the widget is still in it's default state.
My plan here is to have a list of different custom widgets, where the User can modify their content and if they are not happy with the order, they can drag those widgets around and rearrange them.
My question is: How do I preserve the state of my widgets?
I'm thinking of creating a class for each widget with all state relevant variables and use that to build my widgets but that seems very bloated and not really in the mind of flutter. Isn't that supposed to be the role of the state of the StatefulWidget?
EDIT:
So I solved my problem by creating an additional class for my widget state with ChangeNotifier and then moving all my variables that I want to keep track of into this class. So I basically now have two lists, one for my widgets in the reorderable list and one for their states. I still think that this is kinda scuffed. If a widget in my list has additional children of its own, I would need to create separate state classes for each of them that need it and save them somewhere. This can get very messy, very quickly.

Difference between flutter onTap() and javascript/jquery $(this) in click listener

I'm still in the process of learning dart/flutter. I'm experimenting with ListView/ListTile and specifically onTap() from ListTile.
I'm somewhat familiar with JS/Jquery and am having trouble understanding the differences in approach between JS and flutter.
Please try to ignore any semantic or technical errors in the code below. I'm more concerned with theory/approach than if this is a perfectly formatted and syntactically correct example.
In JS, it's common to do something like make an AJAX call to an API to get a list of items for sale from a database. Assume the API returned 4 fields (primary key ID, isAvailable, item name, and item price). You then process the list and create/insert DOM elements for display.
<div id="234" data-isavailable="y" class=".itemsForSale">TV: $800</div>
<div id="345" data-isavailable="y" class=".itemsForSale">Microwave: $200</div>
<div id="456" data-isavailable="n" class=".itemsForSale">Book: $30</div>
<div id="567" data-isavailable="y" class=".itemsForSale">Sofa: $450</div>
You can then set listeners arbitrarily. For instance, you could do...
$( ".itemsForSale" ).click(function() {
// do something
});
The click handler gets applied in "real-time". The code executed is aware of what was clicked and can analyze/interact with that item in the list. So, you can do something like:
$( ".itemsForSale" ).click(function() {
var isAvailable = $(this).attr('data-isavailable');
if( isAvailable == 'n' )
alert('sorry but that item is out of stock!');
else
addItemToCart( $(this).attr('id') );
});
The point being, that the click handler doesn't necessarily know or care about the underlying data of each item. It becomes "context" aware during runtime and then pulls the relevant values out of the UI/etc.
With flutter, I'm looking to recreate similar functionality using a ListView and ListTile. Specifically, ListTile's onTap(). I'm getting confused because it seems like everything is coded "ahead of time".
Here is a basic example (ignore for now I'm not displaying price/etc)...
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
class SecondScreen extends StatelessWidget {
var mapper = {
'234': 'TV',
'345': 'Microwave',
'456': 'Book',
'567': 'Sofa'
};
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Scaffold(
appBar: AppBar(
title: Text("Second Screen"),
),
body:
ListView.builder(
padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
itemCount: mapper.length,
itemBuilder: (BuildContext context, int index) {
return ListTile(
key: new Key(mapper.keys.elementAt(index).toString()),
title: Text('${mapper.values.elementAt(index)}'),
onTap: () {
print('you clicked: ' + mapper.keys.elementAt(index).toString() );
addToShoppingCart( mapper.keys.elementAt(index).toString() ); // this doesnt exist yet and is just an example
}
);
}
)
);
}
}
First of all, I'm not even sure I need to assign a custom key to each ListView item (based on the database's primary key), but that's irrelevant for now.
What I'm getting stuck on is that the onTap handler doesn't seem to have an equivalent of "$(this)". Does flutter give each ViewTile it's "own" copy of onTap() and that each relevant key info is "hardcoded" into each one (for each itemBuilder loop, the current value of mapper.keys.elementAt(index).toString() is substituted into onTap() )?
I'm probably not describing my confusion properly and I'm not even sure all of the issues I'm going to run into. I'm sure my way of doing this is very "old" and not aligned with react and other newer approaches/frameworks (combining data within the UI elements).
I'm just having trouble seeing how I'm going to be able to add more complex logic (like checking availability of what was clicked).
Does anyone have any references or explanations that help me bridge this gap? I don't even know how to describe the concept of $(this) and how I would search for it in comparison to flutter/etc. I just know that something feels very different.
Thanks!
I understand your confusion probably because I'd a similar question when I started with Flutter just a few months back. And here is what I think -
It doesn't really matter whether the ListTile item has it's own copy of onTap() or not. A. It does not have it's own copy. (Following code snippet will explain) and B. Every programming language / SDK / whatever has its own way of working. What you are trying to say, probably, is that you've a BMW. It has got certain type of breaks. And you are trying to make exact type of break in Audi. It may not be right to do it as the other systems related to the breaks may not work in the optimised way.
Now, look at the following code snippet :
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return ListView.separated(
separatorBuilder: (context, index) => ListViewDivider(),
itemCount: faceRecTransactions.length,
itemBuilder: (BuildContext context, int index) {
return FacerecTransactionListItem(facerecTransaction: faceRecTransactions[index], onTap:()=> _onTap(faceRecTransactions[index],context),);
},
);
}
void _onTap(FacerecTransaction facerecTransaction, BuildContext context) {
print('Status : ${facerecTransaction.userId}');
Navigator.push(context, MaterialPageRoute(builder: (context) => FacerecDetailPage(
facerecTransaction: facerecTransaction,
criminalList: this.criminalList,)));
}
There's no copy of onTap for every list item. It just 'feels' as it has because we write onTap inside ListView. If you look at the example above, when the user taps on certain item, then the onTap receives the information. We don't create array of onTap as such.
Since, there's no copy of onTaps, it's not really ahead of time code. It's pretty much works like in Ajax where the onTap doesn't really care about the payload. It just does the action(s) specified.
Now, in the above example, the Detailed Page can check the availability of the particular item. And if the item is not available then either appropriate message can be shown. Depending on the requirement, we can either write this code within onTap or on the next page. In short, the onTap can handle the complex logic as you need.

Flutter - Keep page static throughout lifecycle of app?

I have created an AppDrawer widget to wrap my primary drawer navigation and reference it in a single place, like so:
class AppDrawer extends StatelessWidget {
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Drawer(
child: new ListView(
children: <Widget>[
new ListTile(
title: new Text("Page1"),
trailing: new Icon(Icons.arrow_right),
onTap: () {
Navigator.of(context).pop();
Navigator.of(context).push(new MaterialPageRoute(builder: (BuildContext context) => Page1.singleInstance));
}
),
new ListTile(
title: new Text("Page2"),
trailing: new Icon(Icons.arrow_right),
onTap: () {
Navigator.of(context).pop();
Navigator.of(context).push(new MaterialPageRoute(builder: (BuildContext context) => new Page2("Page 2")));
}
),
]
),
);
}
}
I have also created a custom AppScaffold widget, which simply returns a consistent AppBar, my custom AppDrawer, and body:
class AppScaffold extends StatelessWidget {
final Widget body;
final String pageTitle;
AppScaffold({this.body, this.pageTitle});
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Scaffold(
appBar: new AppBar(title: new Text(pageTitle), backgroundColor: jet),
drawer: AppDrawer(),
body: body
);
}
}
I have created two pages: Page1, and Page2. They are simple right now, and look something like this:
class Page1 extends StatelessWidget {
final String pageText;
Page1(this.pageText);
static Page1 get singleInstance => Page1("Page1");
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return AppScaffold(
pageTitle: this.pageText,
body: SafeArea(
child: Stack(
children: <Widget>[
Center(child: SomeCustomWidget())
],
)
),
);
}
}
class Page2 extends StatelessWidget {
final String pageText;
Page2(this.pageText);
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return AppScaffold(
pageTitle: this.pageText,
body: SafeArea(
child: Stack(
children: <Widget>[
Center(child: SomeOtherCustomWidget())
],
)
),
);
}
}
When I run my app, I can see the navbar and drawer correctly. I can click on the links in the drawer to navigate between my pages. However, each time I navigate to a page, all of the widgets on that page get reset to their initial state. I want to ensure that the widgets do not get reset. Another way to think of this is: I only want one instance of each page throughout the lifecycle of the app, instead of creating them new whenever a user navigates to them.
I tried creating a static instance of Page1 that the Drawer uses when the onTap event is fired, but this does not work. Am I thinking about this incorrectly? Do I need to convert to a Stateful widget?
Oh, you're in for a treat... This will be kinda long (sorry) but please read all of it before making decisions and taking action - I promise I am saving you time.
There are many different solutions to this problem, but in general what you're asking about is state management (which is really software engineering, more info here - Understanding state management, and why you never will).
I'll try my best to explain what is happening in your specific case...
Problem:
Think of Navigator as a List of application states, which you can manipulate via its various methods (i.e. pop(), push(), etc.), with this in mind it is clear what is happening - on a button press you're actually removing the current state (page) and right after that you're pushing a new instance of your state (page).
Solution(s):
As I said, there are many solutions to this problem, for example, you may be tempted to store the state (the changes you made to a particular "page") somewhere in a var and inject that var when navigating between "pages", when creating a new instance of that page, but you'll soon run into other problems. This is why I don't think anyone can provide a simple solution to this problem...
First, may I suggest you some useful reads on the matter:
Flutter official docs on state management - When you get to the "Options" section of this, the fun part begins and can quickly get overwhelming, but fear not :P
Be sure to read the medium article mentioned in the start of my answer too, I found it really helpful.
These reads will be more than enough to help you make a decision, plus there are a ton of articles on Medium and YouTube videos touching on the matter of state management with Flutter (even some from the authors of the framework) - just search for "State management with Flutter".
Now my own personal opinion:
If it's a really simple use case and you don't plan to grow (which is almost never the case, trust me), you can just use StatefulWidgets in combination with setState() and maybe InheritedWidget (for dependency injection down the tree, or like React guys call it "lifting state up"). Or instead of the above, maybe have a look at scoped_model, which kinda abstracts all of this for you (tho, I haven't played with it).
What I use right now for a real world project is bloc and flutter_bloc (BLoC = Business Logic Component), I will not get into the details of it, but basically it takes the idea of scoped_model one step further, without over-complicating abstractions. bloc is responsible for abstracting away the "business logic" of your application and flutter_bloc to "inject" the state in your UI and react to state changes (official Flutter position on the matter is that UI = f(State)).
A BLoC has an input and an output, it takes in events as an input (can be user input, or other, any type of event really) and produces a state. In summary that's it about bloc.
A great way to get started is BLoC's official documentation. I highly recommend it. Just go through everything.
(p.s. This may be my personal opinion, but in the end state management in Flutter is all based on some form of using InheritedWidget and setState() in response to user input or other external factors that should change the application state, so I think the BLoC pattern is really on point with abstracting those :P)

Why does the Software Keyboard cause Widget Rebuilds on Open/Close?

I have a screen, which contains a Form with a StreamBuilder. when I load initial data from StreamBuilder, TextFormField show data as expected.
When I tap inside the TextFormField, the software keyboard shows up, which causes the widgets to rebuild. The same happens again when the keyboard goes down again.
Unfortunately, the StreamBuilder is subscribed again and the text box values is replaced with the initial value.
Here is my code:
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return StreamBuilder(
stream: _bloc.inputObservable(),
builder: (context, snapshot) {
if (snapshot.hasData) {
return TextFormField(
// ...
);
}
return const Center(
child: CircularProgressIndicator(),
);
},
);
}
How do I solve this?
Keyboard causing rebuilds
It makes total sense and is expected that the software keyboard opening causes rebuilds. Behind the scenes, the MediaQuery is updated with view insets. These MediaQueryData.viewInsets make sure that your UI knows about the keyboard obscuring it. Abstractly, the keyboard obscuring a screen causes a change to the window and most of the time to your UI, which requires changes to the UI - a rebuild.
I can make the confident guess that you are using a Scaffold in your Flutter application. Like many other framework widgets, the Scaffold widgets depends (see InheritedWidget) on the MediaQuery (that gets its data from the Window containing your app) using MediaQuery.of(context).
See MediaQueryData for more information.
It all boils down to the Scaffold having a dependency on the view insets. This allows it to resize when these view insets change. Basically, when the keyboard is opened, the view insets update, which allows the scaffold to shrink at the bottom, removing the obscured space.
Long story short, the scaffold adapting to the adjusted view insets requires the scaffold UI to rebuild. And since your widgets are necessarily children of the scaffold (likely the body), your widgets are also rebuilt when that happens.
You can disable the view insets resizing behavior using Scaffold.resizeToAvoidBottomInset. However, this will not necessarily stop the rebuilds as there might still be a dependency on the MediaQuery. I will explain how you should really think about the problem in the following.
Idempotent build methods
You should always build your Flutter widgets in a way where your build methods are idempotent.
The paradigm is that a build call could happen at any point in time, up to 60 times per second (or more if on a higher refresh rate).
What I mean by idempotent build calls is that when nothing about your widget configuration (in the case of StatelessWidgets) or nothing about your state (in the case of StatefulWidgets) changes, the resulting widget tree should be strictly the same. Thus, you do not want to handle any state in build - its only responsibility should be representing the current configuration or state.
The software keyboard opening causing rebuilds is simply a good example for why this is so. Other examples are rotating the device, resizing on web, but it can really be anything as your widget tree starts to get complex (more on that below).
StreamBuilder resubscribing on rebuild
To come back to the original question: in this case, your problem is that you are approaching the StreamBuilder incorrectly. You should not feed it a stream that is recreated each build.
The way stream builders work is by subscribing to the initial stream and then resubscribing whenever the stream is updated. This means that when the stream property of the StreamBuilder widget is different between two build calls, the stream builder will unsubscribe from the first and subscribe to the second (new) stream.
You can see this in the _StreamBuilderBaseState.didUpdateWidget implementation:
if (oldWidget.stream != widget.stream) {
if (_subscription != null) {
_unsubscribe();
_summary = widget.afterDisconnected(_summary);
}
_subscribe();
}
The obvious solution here is that you will want to supply the same stream between different build calls when you do not want to resubscribe. This goes back to idempotent build calls!
A StreamController for example will always return the same stream, which means that it is safe to use stream: streamController.stream in your StreamBuilder. Basically, all controller, behavior subject, etc. implementations should behave this way - as long as you are not recreating your stream, StreamBuilder will properly take care of it!
The faulty function in your case is therefore _bloc.inputObservable(), which creates a new stream each time instead of returning the same one.
Notes
Note that I said that build calls can happen "at any point in time". In reality, you can (technically) control exactly when every build happens in your app. However, a normal app will be so complex that you cannot possibly have control over that, hence, you will want to have idempotent build calls.
The keyboard causing rebuilds is a good example for this.
If you think about it on a high level, this is exactly what you want - the framework and its widget (or widgets that you create) take care of responding to outside changes and rebuilding whenever necessary. Your leaf widgets in the tree should not care about whether a rebuild happens - they should be fine being placed in any environment and the framework takes care of reacting to changes to that environment by rebuilding correspondently.
I hope that I was able to clear this up for you :)
I faced a similar issue in my application. What resolved my issue was to make my "widget tree clean" as suggested by one of the programmers on this forum.
Try moving the definition of your stream to init state. This will prevent your stream from disconnecting and reconnecting every time there is a rebuild.
var datastream;
#override
void initState() {
dataStream = _bloc.inputObservable();
super.initState();
}
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return StreamBuilder(
stream: dataStream,
builder: (context, snapshot) {
if (snapshot.hasData) {
return TextFormField(
// ...
);
}
return const Center(
child: CircularProgressIndicator(),
);
},
);
}
It can be resolved by creating a stateful widget like following
class StatefulWrapper extends StatefulWidget {
final Function onInit;
final Widget child;
const StatefulWrapper({#required this.onInit, #required this.child});
#override
_StatefulWrapperState createState() => _StatefulWrapperState();
}
class _StatefulWrapperState extends State<StatefulWrapper> {
#override
void initState() {
if (widget.onInit.call != null) {
widget.onInit();
}
super.initState();
}
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return widget.child;
}
}
and wrapping the stateless widget using the wrapper
Widget body;
class WidgetStateless extends StatelessWidget {
WidgetStateless();
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return StatefulWrapper(
onInit: () async {
//Create the body widget in the onInit
body = Container();
},
child : body
)
}

How to dynamically add Children to Scaffold Widget

Let's say, I have a chat screen that looks like this.
Now, when the user clicks the "Press when ready" button, the method fetchNewQuestion() is called.
My intention is that this will make a HTTP request, and display the result using
_buildUsersReply(httpResponse);
But, the problem is that this return must be made inside the current scaffold's widget as a child under the existing children, so that it is built at the bottom with the previous ones still there. The result would be like this:
You can find my complete code here.
Is this possible to be done pro-grammatically? Or do I have to change the concept of how I do this?
[Update, I now understand that my approach above is wrong and I have to use a listview builder. CurrentStatus below shows my progress towards achieving that goal.]
Current status:
I have built a list of Widgets:
List<Widget> chatScreenWidgets = [];
And on setState, I am updating that with a new Widget using this:
setState(() { chatScreenWidgets.add(_buildUsersReply("I think there were 35 humans and one horse.")); });
Now at this point, I am not sure how to pass the widget inside the scaffold. I have written some code that does not work. For instance, I tried this:
Code in the image below and in the gist here:
Just for future reference, here is what I really needed to do:
1. Create a list of widgets
List<Widget> chatScreenWidgets = [];
2. Inside my method, I needed to use a setState in order to add elements to that list. Every widget I add to this will be displayed on ths Scaffold.
`setState(() {
chatScreenWidgets.add(_buildUsersReply("Some Text"));
});`
3. And then, load that inside my Scaffold, I used an itemBuilder in order to return a list of widgets to my ListView. I already had that ListView (where I was manually adding children). Now this just returns them through the setState method inside my business logic method (in this case, fetchNewQuestion()).
body: Stack(
children: <Widget>[
Padding(
padding: EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 0),
child: new ListView.builder(
physics: BouncingScrollPhysics(),
padding: EdgeInsets.symmetric(horizontal: 25),
itemCount: chatScreenWidgets.length,
itemBuilder: (BuildContext context, int itemCount) {
return chatScreenWidgets[itemCount];
}
),
),
],
),
);`
I hope this helps future flutter engineers!
forget about the scaffold the idea is about what you really want to change, lets say it is
a list and your getting the data from an array if you update the array, then the list will update,if it is another type widgets then you can handle it in a different way i will edit this answer if you clarify what each part does in your widget as i cant read your full code.
first you have to create an object with two attributes one is the type of the row(if it is a user replay or other messages) and the second attribute is the string or the text.
now create a global list in the listview class from the above object, so you get the data from the user or even as a news and you create a new object from the above class and add your data to it and add it to the list.
item builder returns a widget so according to the the widget that you return the row will be set , so according to the data in the object call one of your functions that return the views like _buildUsersReply(string text).
if you have any other question you can ask :) if this what you need please mark it as the answer.