Check if Flutter widget will/can get focus - flutter

In Flutter's focus system you can specify what should happen after FocusNode.unfocus is called. When I use previouslyFocusedChild it will automatically give focus to the previously focused child.
I was wondering if it is possible to get this information from a child perspective. For example: I would like to highlight the previsouslyFocusedChild to give the end-user some indication which element in the UI will get focus after performing an action. Is this possible?

Related

flutter how do I use the listener onPointerPanZoomUpdate?

I'm wanting to use onPointerPanZoomUpdate
on the listener widget
refer - https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/widgets/Listener-class.html
but when put this widget into my widget tree I don't get the option to use onPointerPanZoomUpdate. The documentation has it as a property, so I assumed I should be able to set it.
I was wanting to use this to get two finger panning working and to be able to tell when it was iPad interaction, which I want as two finger interaction, or if it was windows interaction. For windows I was wanting mouse interaction (i.e. one point).

How to ignore a specific pointer event in flutter desktop app?

I am using InteractiveViewer which enables the user to "drag" that widget around when panEnabled is true. The drag can happen using the mouse right-click or middle-click. However, I want to limit this only to the middle-click. So is there a widget, maybe like IgnorePointer, but which has a callback or something that gives me the key that caused the event and I return then true or false for ignoring or not ignoring accordingly?

How to check visibility of a Flutter widget even when covered by another

I'm trying to find a way to check the visibility of a Flutter widget when it's either off screen or when it's obscured by another, for example Drawer, Dialog or BottomSheet.
visibility_detector helps with checking whether it's on the screen or not but does not work with the second use case (known limitation).
Is there a lower lever api that I can use to check whether a widget is actually visible to the user?
My use case: I'm adding a widget to the Overlay when something external happens (similar to Tooltip but not on long press). If the user opens for example the Drawer, the widget will appear on top. I want to detect that the child is not visible and delay or cancel the action.
Do I understand your problem?
You have a widget you want to always be on top?
You want the user to interact with that widget first before doing other things?
Use design patterns to make coding easier, your users will thank you.
You can show a Dialog on-top of other widgets with the showGeneralDialog or showDialog functions. Because Dialogs are a design-pattern used in many apps, users will already know how to use them.
Define app behavior with explicit state.
It is too hard to derive app behavior from rendered UI, not all devices are the same size and shape. This means you should try to write a variable that describes your situation and then write the code you need to make that variable's value correct. It sounds like you want a variable like bool overlayIsShowing.

Preserving the State of a Drawer in Flutter

I have a stateful Scaffold widget, where the body contains a list of entities with various properties (e.g. shoes or cars) and Drawer widget, which is empty at first, except for two buttons at the bottom ("Cancel" and "Filter") and a FAB. The user can add various filters with the FAB (e.g. the user can add a shoesize-filter, or a color-filter).
The problem I have is the following: Let's say the user selects various filters and works with them (i.e. ticks checkboxes, enters a shoesize, changes sliders, etc.). When the user is ready to apply the filters, he can click the "Filter" button, which closes the Drawer (onTap -> callback -> Navigator.of(context).pop()). But when the user wants to go back, reopen the Drawer, and adjust one of the filters, it obviously doesn't work, since the widget is being rebuilt from scratch.
Currently, the way the filtering works is, once the "Filter" Button is pressed, all the various values from the added filters are collected into an object FilterPackage, which is then passed via callback to the Scaffold widget, which then applies the values from the FilterPackage to the list of entities.
One solution I came up with, would be feeding this FilterPackage object to the Drawer widget in its constructor, which would provide all the information necessary to rebuild the widget just how it has to be.
Is that a reasonable solution? I have already made some research, but struggled finding a solution on what would clearly be the best and recommended way to preserve the drawer's state. Using PageStorage / PageStorageBucket seems overly complicated for this case. Or am I wrong?
Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Determining if widget is in the foreground/background

Say I have a Flutter app with two screens - screen A and screen B. Screen A is just a ListView that displays a list of items but needs to perform a network call whenever the list changes and then update the list. Screen B can modify the list of items but I want screen A to only perform the network call when screen A is in the foreground and being displayed. As far as I can tell, I cannot do this easily. Screen A is not disposed and reinitialized when navigating to and from screen B. It would very helpful if StatefulWidget had onForeground and onBackground methods to override, but they do not. This problem is not exclusive to navigation either, but this same problem presents itself when using PageView with full-screen pages. Is there some proper/standard way of implementing this?
My current setup is as follows: I let the parent widget to both screen A and B hold the list in a ValueNotifier and pass it to both screens when constructing them. Then, screen A listens for changes on the ValueNotifier and performs a network call whenever it does. So, in order to determine whether screen A is in the foreground/background, I will have to start/stop listening for changes before/after navigating. But I haven't started implementing this, as I think it will get complicated when widgets far down the widget tree trigger the navigation or other widgets need to know whether they're in the foreground/background.
Another option I've thought of is instead of observing for changes in the list, I could rather just return a result from screen B saying whether or not the list changed and react then. But I can think of many ways this can complicate my code as well since my real app involves more than just one dependency. I would have to create a custom result class for each screen containing a record of all the data that changed then it would be tedious if I want to add more data in the future. And how would I handle navigation to screen B then screen C? The result would have to be retained and passed down so screen A can react to changes made by screen C. I would also have to ensure all calls to Navigator.pop contained the result, and override back button presses to pop with the result. And I'd also have to ensure that the result makes it to the proper widgets that need to react to changes.
Am I just missing something simple to accomplish this? I am not the most experienced with Flutter and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some easy solution I haven't learned yet.
Edit: After some more testing, it appears AnimationController does something similar to what I need with the vsync parameter, in that it does not update when the State is in the background or when it is not being drawn. So, I could use SingleTickerProviderStateMixin on screen A's state, then use createTicker to create a Ticker, and then check if the Ticker.isTicking whenever the list changes. If it is ticking, screen A is in the foreground, otherwise it is in the background. Although I'm not sure if this is a good approach, since it appears Ticker's are really only used for Animations and there's nothing documented for a use case like mine.