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But you’ll probably die trying By all accounts, 2017 should have been a banner year for Looxie, my location-based photo request app. Two years ago, if you had told me that Looxie would be featured in the world’s biggest English-language newspaper and TechRadar’s 100 Best Apps of 2017 round-up as well as a lot of other places I would have laughed you out of the room. Had I believed you, though, I’d have painted a very different picture to the current one in my mind: I would imagine myself being one of those globetrotting entrepreneurs (i believe kids these days call them ) working on my laptop while sipping mai tais on a beach somewhere, preferably Bali. digital nomads In addition, my crippling stress-related Irritable Bowel Syndrome would be downgraded to a mere Couple-Of-Embarrassing-Farts-A-Day syndrome. And yet, here I am, an oral surgeon by day and aspiring tech visionary by night, still taking out wisdom teeth for a living and still a mere ten seconds from shitting my pants at any given time. Why I’m writing this If you’re a solo app developer like me, this has probably happened to you before: you opened a respected site’s “Best Apps of the Week” round-up and saw a list of apps. You thought “damn, son — these guys got it made. If only my app was included in a similar list. Then I could quit my day job and collect checks in my underwear”. OK, that was slightly hyperbolic but I always thought that inclusion in such lists was a gateway to hundreds of thousands of downloads and maybe an eventual offer for acquisition by Google. If that’s what you thought, you’re in for a rude awakening if your app ever gets included in this kind of round-up. Or not, because you read this article and (spoilers) you’re prepared to be underwhelmed. The Interwebs ft. Looxie I released Looxie in the summer of 2016. As you’re almost legally obligated to do after releasing an app, I posted about the release on my personal Facebook page, Hacker News, Reddit and various other outlets and forums. To cut a long story short, after all my posts, Looxie ended up being featured in PhoneArena AndroidWorld and a couple of other local outlets, both print and online LarnakaOnline AndroidWorld (again, these guys must love Looxie) InBusiness (sorry, no link!) Phandroid the Mobile Roar podcast ? these guys, I guess appszoom ZTE’s Croatian website (no, really) TechRadar’s Top 100 of 2017 the print edition of The Times of India Based on my previous experience releasing apps, this is not the typical online reaction to an app release. Things were looking good. The app must have at least a million downloads by now, right? Let me skip the thousand words and answer that question with a picture This picture is kind of misleading: the Play Store won’t show any download numbers between 1000 and 5000 downloads. Based on my latest Google Play developer console stats, the app has been downloaded about 4100 times so far. 4100 downloads. Yup. So, what’s the matter? What went wrong here? Honestly, nothing much. I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time and I attribute the lack of faster growth to a couple of reasons. Saturation With more than two million apps in the Play Store, you’d be lucky to have your app downloaded a hundred times, much less a thousand times. Everybody is vying for attention but there’s only so much of it to go around. Personally, I used to look forward to “best of the week” app lists. I would visit Android blogs, routinely downloading all (or most) of them and keeping the ones I thought would be useful. I no longer do that. Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I check out some round-ups, I end up downloading a couple of apps at most. do I mean, how many apps does anyone need? Plus, the novelty has worn off. I’ve always said that I don’t play the lottery and I don’t buy scratch tickets because I don’t want to rely on luck to . Instead, I want to because of my own hard work and dedication. make it make it I now find it extremely ironic that I thought making apps would be a way for me to do that, since the chance of actually earning a comfortable living by creating an app must be comparable to the chances of winning the lottery at this point. Android exclusivity No reason to hide it, I’m a huge Android fan. I never even tried developing for iOS since it’s a platform I don’t have much of an interest in. However, this is really detrimental to the chances of any app making it big. First of all, all those Silicon Valley types (VCs, journalists, bloggers etc) are primarily users of Apple devices. If your app is not on iOS, it may as well not exist. Not only that, but unfortunately you won’t find the sort of camaraderie that you find on Apple platforms between Android developers and Android users. A lot of Mac- or iOS-exclusive products proudly proclaim that they are Mac or iOS-only to the Apple tribe (check out and for two examples of products that giddily advertise the fact on their landing pages). It’s a badge of honor. Robofont Sketch If you try and advertise that your app is Android-only, the reaction you’ll get from most Android users (even hardcore ones) will be “yeah, so?”. And then you’ll get 1-star reviews in the Play Store because your photography app doesn’t show you how to do pilates or some shit. Bonus reason: Requiring registration And not only requiring registration, but demanding that the users do it by using their email instead of offering Facebook, Twitter or Google sign in/up. In hindsight, that was pretty idiotic of me (although, in my defense, I was just starting to learn Firebase, so that was the easiest way for me to implement a registration system). As stats go, how is this one? Out of the 4100 users that downloaded the app, only 2215 actually bothered to sign up so far. Registration is OK if it’s easy and convenient to do. Definitely not OK if the users have to jump through hoops — and make no mistake: nowadays, an email-based registration procedure is jumping through hoops. _I'm an Android developer and designer with a love for beautiful UIs!_www.buymeacoffee.com Buy Antonis Tsagaris a Coffee - BuyMeACoffee.com Endless bummer. Or not? Not really! This may be an end-of-year introspective post but creating Looxie has brought nothing but joy to my life. Looxie now has a bunch of dedicated, regular users sending real-time photos from around the world. Its real-time nature makes each picture a joy to receive, even to me. Nope, actually, to me: knowing that my app is being used around the world more than makes up for the Firebase fees and the time I put into developing it. especially right now And interestingly, I consider Looxie to be working at the scale it should be. If it ever got anything like millions of users, the Firebase fees would explode, rendering me unable to keep it running, since I haven’t received any funding. Firebase can scale just fine but my bank account cannot. And this is something that I never considered when I started working on Looxie. Words of wisdom? I’m not saying “don’t make an app”. I’m not even saying “don’t dare to dream”. Making something and seeing it work is an amazing feeling and it’s something I’ll keep doing myself, even if I know that the chances of making it big are slim to non-existent. I’m just saying that you should keep your expectations in check and (specifically for this article) if you see your app featured in Android or general tech blogs, don’t quit your day job. Yet.

(Try to) Get rich quick by making an app!

Taking advantage of one of Android’s best features I am not going to lie. At least not for the next 5 minutes or so that it’ll take you to read this article. My passion project is . I released this app in the summer of 2016 because I have this insatiable curiosity about what’s happening all around the world. Looxie Bragging rights: Looxie got mentioned as one of the best five apps of the week on PhoneArena, Phandroid and AndroidWorld.nl The basic function of Looxie can be described thusly: you tap on a (Google) map to place a pin on it and request a photo (with an optional description of what you want to see) from any users around that location. The user can only respond with a photo that has been taken in real-time. So if you receive a photo at 9.53pm, you know that the photo was taken at that exact moment, only somewhere else in the world. That’s why my tagline for the app is “Your window to the world”. I am expecting a cease and desist from Burt Bacharach’s laywers anyday now. When I started designing Looxie’s interface, I wanted to experiment a bit so I didn’t go for a Navigation Drawer as my primary means of navigation. And, in any case, the cool kids have decided that a navigation drawer is not a user-friendly navigation pattern. It’s all about bottom tabs this week, folks! Instead, I went for the relatively “archaic” method of using the Dashboard navigation pattern, ie a list of actions you can take, right on the main screen of the app, like this It’s pretty obvious, right? Tap on the action you want to perform, be taken to its screen and do what you want to do. While I think that the screen itself is aesthetically pleasing, I never really liked it because It looks like a screen from a spreadsheet app or something. It’s all business, no play No action could actually be taken on this screen. Instead, you had to tap on an action and then, on the next screen perform your desired action or see the photos you received. One unnecessary step that adds friction to the app As features got added to the app, they had to be added to this list, which grew larger by the day. On the screenshot above, there’s an item missing since you have to scroll to the bottom of the list to find the “Add Venue” action My attempt to rectify this was what I called The Bulletin, a more approachable section at the top of the screen, with a grid of the three most recent photos taken around the world and an easier way to send requests either randomly or on the map. Here it is Now it looks more like a photo-oriented app but it’s still a list. The cherry on top? I kept the list from the first screenshot below the new list / grid, for people used to the old interface (at least until I was ready to phase it out, which would happen gradually). You now had to scroll approximately to reach the bottom of the Dashboard and view all available actions. Not the end of the world but really unintuitive. two and a half screens I now had the following choices keep it as it is. Tempting but not optimal completely redesign my user interface paradigm around something more appropriate, like (perhaps) a tabbed interface. go for a drink or visit the toilet. Or go for a drink in the toilet. Tempting optimal and And then a light bulb went off in my head. A light bulb. Not the one that went off in my head. How about I let the user design their own interface? Android has this sweet concept called home screen widgets. Mini-apps, essentially, running on the homescreen, giving up-to-date information to the user. Another cool thing about them? They are interactive. Widgets are kind of limited in what they can do (actually, mostly in what they can display). The main problems are these Not all AdapterViews or View / ViewGroup subclasses are available to use. The main problem I see with this is no EditText support for entering text, although now that Notifications support instant replies and show an input field on the Notification (which is also a RemoteView, like a widget) maybe it’ll be made available on higher API levels. Just a theory. trying to use custom fonts or do animations is an exercise in frustration and require hacks and weird workarounds. These do not present a huge challenge to me, since I wasn’t really planning on doing animations on my widgets and I can live with using Roboto Condensed instead of Roboto Slab on them. Now, I’m not here to write a tutorial on how to create widgets. The Android Developer site has a on how to accomplish this, so hit dat link! very nice tutorial I am mostly here to outline my plan and maybe inspire you to use this pattern in your own app. So here we go. Looxie features Looxie has a “Profile” section: it shows your likes, upvotes and the total number of points you’ve accumulated by sending photos to other users or entering venues in the database. “Received Requests” section: when you receive a request for a photo, it goes in here. You tap it and you’re taken to a camera app to take the photo. “Your Looxies” section: the last 10 or 20 (depending on your level) photos you have received from other users “Become Eager” section: just a switch that, when on, tells other users that you are really eager to send a photo by making your dot on the map green. This was really easy to use, since it acted as a switch and didn’t take you to a different screen. “Search Venues” section: instead of going on a map and placing a pin on it, you can go and search for venues by name, assuming that they have been entered into the database by someone (see “Add a Venue” below) “Drop Pin” section: go on the map, place a pin on the area you’re interested in and request a photo from there “Add a Venue” section: when you’re at a specific place, capture it by entering its name and type (bar / monument / shop etc) and make it searchable for others On the Bulletin, you can see the three latest photos taken from users around the world, send a request randomly by tapping a dice and request photos from the most active users. Most users use the Your Looxies, Received Requests and Drop Pin sections and also love requesting photos from the most active users through the Bulletin. All these make sense, since they are what makes Looxie fun to use. The “Add a Venue” section is rarely used, even though the app awards you a point every time you capture a venue. Suckers! I bet you didn’t know that! So imagine this: instead of forcing a layout on users and giving them options they may not ever use, why not let them build their own interface from modular components on their freaking home screen? Now, is optimal! that My vision. No, not vision. The cool one. that In my vision for this, you have a Bulletin widget, which shows you the six latest photos taken. Another widget can act as your gallery, showing a list of the newest photos you have personally received from around the world. Go into another screen to respond to a request? LOL, are you nuts? Why not have a list of the latest requests on your home screen, tap those and be taken directly to the camera app from your home screen? Or have a 1x1 widget which lets you fulfil the latest request when you tap it? A Profile widget can act as an always-present feed about your Looxie status on your homescreen. Another widget called Most Active users will let you tap on one of them to request a photo, again from your home screen. And so on. The best part? Don’t care about your profile and points? No problem, don’t place that widget on your homescreen! Don’t care about the photos sent to other people? Fine! Remove the Bulletin widget and add a widget that shows latest photos. your In other words, allow me to Lego-ize the app and go build your own interface in any page of your homescreen from resizable components offered to you by me, your friendly neighborhood developer. Use what you want, discard everything else. Sounds good? I am interested in opinions, as I’m really excited about the possibilities of this. The only downsides I see are extra development work for me, which I don’t mind at all if someone ever ports Looxie to iOS, they won’t be able to port the home screen widgets modular interface paradigm. But who cares about those iOS plebs, right? I have already started implementing my plan and the latest update includes the first of the planned widgets, called “Postcard”, the latest photo taken from a user around the world. It looks like this … and I’m so excited by it, I’m probably skipping sleep tonight! And yes, you can resize it, too Go on. Resize all you want!

Lego-ize it!

So far, I have enjoyed using as a CI tool for deployment of APKs on my Android projects. This post is just to build on what my friend wrote about on his detailed 3 part series “Automating the Android Build and Release Process using Fastlane”. Fastlane Roger I remember spending hours of research trying to find a file that would work easily for Gitlab specifically. config.yml # Begin by defining the image to be used, this is what I found as the latest version to work well for Android in 2019/2020 image: openjdk:8-jdk variables: ANDROID_COMPILE_SDK: "28" ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS: "28.0.2" ANDROID_SDK_TOOLS: "4333796" # PLEASE EDIT THIS PART TO MATCH YOUR PROJECT FOLDER NAME before_script: - cd <<INSERT THE NAME OF YOUR PROJECT FOLDER>>; - chmod +x ./gradlew - apt-get --quiet update --yes - apt-get --quiet install --yes wget tar unzip lib32stdc++6 lib32z1 ruby-full build-essential g++ - wget --quiet --output-document=android-sdk.zip https://dl.google.com/android/repository/sdk-tools-linux-${ANDROID_SDK_TOOLS}.zip - unzip -d android-sdk-linux android-sdk.zip - echo y | android-sdk-linux/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platforms;android-${ANDROID_COMPILE_SDK}" >/dev/null
  - echo y | android-sdk-linux/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platform-tools" >/dev/null
  - echo y | android-sdk-linux/tools/bin/sdkmanager "build-tools;${ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS}" >/dev/null
  - export ANDROID_HOME=$PWD/android-sdk-linux
  - export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools/
  
  # This is important to temporarily disable checking for EPIPE error and use yes to accept all licenses
  - set +o pipefail
  - yes | android-sdk-linux/tools/bin/sdkmanager --licenses
  - set -o pipefail

  # This step installs Fastlane
  - gem install bundler
  - bundle install
  
# This step specifies the stages to be executed when the script is running. For this example, I used only one stage.
# You can have more than one stage listed here. stages: - build # This step defines where the release apk is uploaded to on Google Play Store. # In this example, it's uploaded to the Beta track/phase when the pipeline in my master branch (on Gitlab) runs successfully. assembleRelease: stage: build only: - master script: - ./gradlew assembleRelease - bundle exec fastlane beta artifacts: paths: - app/build/outputs/ Here’s a config that can work for you if you are going to integrate Fastlane with Gitlab. I put in short comments to guide you as you set up but you can always reach out in case you get stuck. Main Reference: https://proandroiddev.com/automating-the-android-build-and-release-process-using-fastlane-part-3-9357414688a2 Also published at https://medium.com/quick-code/hack-integrating-gitlab-with-fastlane-for-android-4af914f1cbe8

How I Hacked a Gitlab Integration with Fastlane for Android

With Android 9 (API level 28), Google officially started supporting what’s famously known as the notch, a cutout display at the top (because the last two years were the years of the notch?). I can’t claim that but with the notch support, most of the brands came out with their version of a cutout display and with that, we as developers need to think about yet another edge case, especially if we’re working with a completely experience. immersive To give you a little knowledge of what I’ve researched, what I noticed while dealing with the notch is that the devices’ notch are either the size of the status bar or the status bar is adjusted vertically is the notch is a bit longer. So since the status bar is not technically a part of your app, it is almost always taken care of by Android. But.. What happens when you want to hide the status bar to make your view fullscreen? That is something you need to solve as a developer. And since I’ve already taken my time solving it last week, I thought of it as the perfect new tutorial for everyone of you to save your time dealing with it. Let’s get started. Prerequisite ☝️ For this tutorial I’ve used but things should work on other versions of AS as well. Android Studio 4.0 Preview Project Setup ⚙️ First things first. We need to have the problem to solve the problem. In order to disable the status bar to go immersive in an app. Do the following: 1. Open a new project. 2. Select an Project Template. This would create an empty screen with an Action Bar. Empty Activity 3. Type any name for the project and select Kotlin from the language 4. Click Finish. 5. Run the project to see the look of your initial app. Material Dependency 😍 Since we need to style our app a bit, we need Android’s Material library which is not part of the app at the moment, so first thing is to add the Material library to our project. To do so: Open (Module) build.gradle Add this line in the dependency section: implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.1.0' At the time of writing, the latest Material version was 1.1.0, but you can use any latest stable release you want from or . Note: Google’s Maven Repository MVN Repository 3. Sync the project. Adding a custom Toolbar 🖌 You must be thinking if we already have a toolbar set up, why add another. It is because the default toolbar that’s set up by the project is from a parent layout that we do not have a control of, so when we enable fullscreen on the app, the toolbar hides along with other system elements, but we want to have control over it in order to not hide it automatically. Here’s how to set it up: 1. Open styles.xml. 2. Replace your parent theme from to (running the app at this stage should not display any toolbar) Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar Theme.MaterialComponents.NoActionBar.Bridge . 3. Open activity_main.xml. 4. Add the following lines in place of the placeholder to add a toolbar (running the app at this stage should display an empty toolbar) TextView . < = = = = = = = = /> androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar android:id "@+id/toolbar" android:minHeight "?attr/actionBarSize" android:layout_width "match_parent" android:layout_height "wrap_content" android:background "?attr/colorPrimary" app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf "parent" app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf "parent" app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf "parent" 5. Open MainActivity.kt. 6. Add this line after to setup our own toolbar and display the app title. setContentView() setSupportActionBar(findViewById(R.id.toolbar)) Enabling fullscreen 🌅 To enable fullscreen, we need to hide the top status bar and the bottom system navigation bar, to do so, Android Developer Guides has just the right doc for it: : https://developer.android.com/training/system-ui/immersive 1.Open . styles.xml 2. Add a new style below the AppTheme: < = = > style name "AppTheme.Fullscreen" parent "AppTheme" true shortEdges < = > item name "android:windowFullscreen" </ > item < = = > item name "android:windowLayoutInDisplayCutoutMode" tools:targetApi "p" </ > item </ > style 3. Open AndroidManifest.xml 4. In the MainActivity attributes, add the attribute with the styles that you just created: android:theme < = = > activity android:name ".MainActivity" android:theme "@style/AppTheme.Fullscreen" < > intent-filter < = /> action android:name "android.intent.action.MAIN" < = /> category android:name "android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" </ > intent-filter </ > activity 5. Now in your , add the following lines: MainActivity.kt { .onWindowFocusChanged(hasFocus) (hasFocus) {
            hideSystemUIAndNavigation( )
        }
    } { decorView: View = activity.window.decorView
        decorView.systemUiVisibility =
            (View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE or View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_STABLE
                    or View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_HIDE_NAVIGATION
                    or View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_FULLSCREEN or View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION
                    or View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_FULLSCREEN)
    } override fun onWindowFocusChanged (hasFocus: ) Boolean super if this private fun hideSystemUIAndNavigation (activity: ) Activity val // Set the content to appear under the system bars so that the // content doesn't resize when the system bars hide and show. // Hide the nav bar and status bar 6. Run the app and you’re good to go! Except that you’re not. If you run the app at this moment on a device with a notch / cutout display, you’d notice that the toolbar is hidden by the notch: And that’s the problem this story is all about. The Fix 🔧 Approach I: In order to solve the issum, the first approach you might be thinking to take it to simply add padding to the toolbar to position it below the notch. But since we have in different heights on different devices, we can’t hardcode a constant value (for instance, 24dp or 48dp) in order to add a margin on top of the toolbar. But there must be a way the height of the status bar is set by the system, you must think. Yes there is, and you access it by but since that’s a private value, adding a to your toolbar throws a build error: @android:dimen/status_bar_height android:layout_marginTop=”@android:dimen/status_bar_height” AAPT: error: android:dimen/status_bar_height is private. resource And even if you did add a constant value, it might work for the notch but not for no-notch devices: Approach II and the magic: 🎩 The approach that I had to take to solve this issue is to simply work on it programmatically: to add padding only when needed. And since Google has a few new APIs to deal with the notch, achieving this hack is quite easy: 1. In your , add a new method: MainActivity.kt { (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.P) { windowInsets = window.decorView.rootWindowInsets (windowInsets != ) { displayCutout = windowInsets.displayCutout (displayCutout != ) { safeInsetTop = displayCutout.safeInsetTop newLayoutParams = toolbar.layoutParams ViewGroup.MarginLayoutParams
                 newLayoutParams.setMargins( , safeInsetTop, , )
                 toolbar.layoutParams = newLayoutParams
            }
        }
    }
} @SuppressLint( ) "NewApi" private fun adjustToolbarMarginForNotch () // Notch is only supported by >= Android 9 if val if null val if null val val as 0 0 0 2. Call this method just right below in to let the change affect when we hide the system UIs. hideSystemUIAndNavigation(this) onWindowFocusChanged Since some of the methods that we call here are quite new to the Google APIs (for instance, , etc), they’re supported by Android 9. And since the notch is quite a new trend in devices, all the new devices with the notch do run Android ≥ 9, so we’re all good here. 👌 Note: rootViewInsets, displayCutout only If you run the app now, you see that the margin is only added when we do have a notch: Extra: Styling 🎨 So far so good, we just need to add some style to the empty area or extend our toolbar to the top to make it not look very odd. To do so: 1. In your , add a new view with a size of the toolbar (?attr/actionBarSize) on top of toolbar, like: activity_main.xml < = = = = = = /> View android:layout_width "match_parent" android:layout_height "?attr/actionBarSize" android:background "?attr/colorPrimary" app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf "parent" app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf "parent" app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf "parent" 2. Run the app to see the changes. And so, you can play around with the background of the view and/or the toolbar to adjust the style according to your taste: Happy coding! 💻 Source code for the Final Version GitHub As always, let me know if my tutorial helped you in anyway and the things I can improve in writing tutorials by sending a DM or a Tweet at: ✌️ twitter.com/waseefakhtar Previously published at https://proandroiddev.com/android-material-toolbar-vs-displaycutout-6ae99b2b7ef0

Android Material Component: Toolbar vs DisplayCutout

Photo by on JESHOOTS.COM Unsplash The technique described in the article can be applied to learn any language or framework. In fact, it can be applied to learn anything in life. I have used it all along to learn react, blockchain, dockers, creating music etc. However in this post, I will only talk about how I applied it to learn Flutter. This technique takes you away from traditional ways taking a course and watching lengthy videos. Also, it won’t make you an expert but if you apply it over and over again, you can become an expert. If applied once, you can say that you know the basics and have somewhat experience in using flutter. What to expect? Post successful implementation of this technique, you will be basic knowledge of flutter and something to showcase your knowledge.  It is a goal oriented technique and requires your attention only on those building blocks which helps you achieve your specific goal. Without further ado let’s begin - Read in general about the Flutter framework. What it is ? How it works ? Languages used etc.  or just watch a video on youtube. Setting a context - Come up with a small idea that you think can be built quickly like a to do list, a calculator or a quiz, it can be anything based on your choice and expertise. Goal Setting - Understand how a typical flutter project is structured. You may want to understand, how to structure your code, where to add permissions, plugins , where to put assets. etc. Project Structure - This is the step where you need to have good research skills. Set up the development environment for flutter using the official docs and break your target goal into sub components and learn how to implement those sub components. You will have to explore through the flutter documentation and other articles, to identify and learn what building blocks are required. But how will you know what building blocks are available ? Setting-up & Execution flutter Google every question that you have in mind. And it will direct you towards what building blocks are available. In case of flutter, everything is a widget. EVERYTHING!. You google the widgets, widget for creating a list, widget for layout, widget for page views etc.  Below are the reference links that I used to learn and develop my app flutter. I believe these will be very helpful for anyone starting to learn flutter. I have posted them on as well ( which I will keep updating). Also, I would like thank all the developer beings :p and hard working people for producing all the resources. github Also, if you are curious this ( & ) is what I build using flutter. ios android Useful links - Navigation Tabs https://willowtreeapps.com/ideas/how-to-use-flutter-to-build-an-app-with-bottom-navigation https://medium.com/@uncoded_decimal/creating-bottom-navigation-tabs-using-flutter-2286681450d4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlUd-BAu0DMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlUd-BAu0DM ListView https://medium.com/@DakshHub/flutter-displaying-dynamic-contents-using-listview-builder-f2cedb1a19fb Routes https://flutter.dev/docs/cookbook/navigation/named-routes PageView https://medium.com/flutter-community/a-deep-dive-into-pageview-in-flutter-with-custom-transitions-581d9ea6dded Story Demo https://github.com/fdoyle/flutter_demo_movies/blob/master/lib/main.dart Building Layouts https://pusher.com/tutorials/flutter-building-layouts https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-layout-cheat-sheet-5363348d037e Text Styling https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/painting/TextStyle-class.html AppBar Sliver - Expandable view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9C5KMJKluE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5bklM7YfIo https://proandroiddev.com/flutter-a-hitchhiker-guide-to-stateless-and-stateful-widgets-cc9f9295253b https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49227667/using-safearea-in-flutter Splash Screen https://medium.com/@vignesh_prakash/flutter-splash-screen-84fb0307ac55 https://medium.com/@diegoveloper/flutter-splash-screen-9f4e05542548 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t6Ug4pjw6U Version Code https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51534616/how-to-change-package-name-in-flutter Firebase https://firebase.google.com/docs/flutter/setup https://firebaseopensource.com/projects/flutter/plugins/ https://github.com/flutter/plugins/blob/master/packages/firebase_analytics/example/lib/main.dart Layout Approach https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/layout/tutorial Database https://medium.com/@studymongolian/simple-sqflite-database-example-in-flutter-e56a5aaa3f91 https://flutterbyexample.com/stateful-widget-lifecycle/ https://proandroiddev.com/flutter-bookshelf-app-part-2-personal-notes-and-database-integration-a3b47a84c57 Variables http://thetechnocafe.com/just-enough-dart-for-flutter-tutorial-01-variables-types-and-functions/ JSON parsing in Flutter/Dart https://medium.com/flutter-community/parsing-complex-json-in-flutter-747c46655f51 https://github.com/PoojaB26/ParsingJSON-Flutter/blob/master/lib/model/product_model.dart Assets https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/assets-and-images Shared prefs https://medium.com/flutter-community/shared-preferences-how-to-save-flutter-application-settings-and-user-preferences-for-later-554d08671ae9 Async call https://flutter.dev/docs/cookbook/networking/fetch-data https://flutter.institute/run-async-operation-on-widget-creation/ https://medium.com/@takahirom/how-to-write-flutter-asynchronous-processing-22f845204f30 https://flutter-academy.com/async-in-flutter-futurebuilder/ Stacks https://medium.com/flutter-community/a-deep-dive-into-stack-in-flutter-3264619b3a77https://medium.com/flutter-community/a-deep-dive-into-stack-in-flutter-3264619b3a77 https://mightytechno.com/flutter-stack-widget/ Share https://github.com/flutter/plugins/tree/master/packages/share https://github.com/d-silveira/flutter-share Others https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-architectures/home https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45924474/how-do-you-detect-the-host-platform-from-dart-code PageView as Gesture https://medium.com/flutter-community/synchronising-widget-animations-with-the-scroll-of-a-pageview-in-flutter-2f3475fcffa3 https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/widgets/GestureDetector-class.html Animations https://medium.com/flutter-community/scrolling-animation-in-flutter-6a6718b8e34f Intro Screens https://flutterawesome.com/a-flutter-package-for-some-material-design-app-intro-screens/ https://flutterawesome.com/simple-and-configurable-app-introduction-slider-for-flutter/ https://github.com/duytq94/flutter-intro-slider/blob/master/example/lib/intro.dart Navigation https://flutter.dev/docs/cookbook/navigation/navigation-basics Flutter Android Build & Signing https://flutter.dev/docs/deployment/android#build-an-apk https://medium.com/flutterpub/flutter-andorid-keystore-path-on-different-os-d0fc30a24d4f https://flutter.dev/docs/deployment/android https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/29975 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49874194/flutter-release-apk-is-not-working-properly Rendering, Widgets, etc https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-what-are-widgets-renderobjects-and-elements-630a57d05208 https://medium.com/flutter-community/the-layer-cake-widgets-elements-renderobjects-7644c3142401 https://medium.com/saugo360/flutters-rendering-engine-a-tutorial-part-1-e9eff68b825d Stream builder/cloud firestorm https://medium.com/@atul.sharma_94062/how-to-use-cloud-firestore-with-flutter-e6f9e8821b27 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47111181/firestore-offline-data-merging-writes-maximum-time-of-offline-persistence https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/manage-data/enable-offline https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/data-model https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/19122 https://www.gotut.net/flutter-firestore-tutorial-part-1/ Cheers! Feel free to connect on or . linkedin instagram

How I learned Flutter and How you Can Too...

After the moment I got interested in Flutter I was looking for ideas for a simple app that solves a problem. This post is a retrospection, two weeks after writing first lines of code. Problem Firstly, we need a problem to solve. I was on shopping with my mom in a market. We were buying some stuff for the incoming Christmas. She had a list of products to buy on a piece of paper. Everything was okay with it, with one exception. After getting a few products in the basket, I realized that we are going from one end of the market to another several times already. I looked on this list and saw the problem. The list wasn’t nicely written and reading it required some effort. Therefore, it wasn’t possible to quickly take a look at all the items on the list and put them in the basket at the moment you saw them. You had to read the list every time after collecting each product because you didn’t automatically memorize other stuff from the list. Also, you should always remember to bring this list with you. If you happened to forget about it, you had a problem. You either try to remind yourself what was in it or call someone at home to send it to you. The last problem that I’ve observed is looking at what is already in the basket and what is not. I bet you don’t have a pen with you to check or cross out already collected items. Because of that, from time to time you look on your list and check what you already have and what is still needed. It distracts you from your shopping and wastes your time. Idea My idea for solving those problems was really simple. Simple ideas are the best. My mom needed a very clear and readable shopping list. Photo by on David Ballew Unsplash That’s it. The origin of the problem was the effort needed for reading the list and making sure to always bring it with you. If the list was easily readable, you would focus on collecting items from the list, not on the list itself. Simple and intuitive controls would also help in making the distinction between items already in the basket and those that are still not collected. All of it can be easily solved by using a mobile application addressing all the issues. Implementation I need to create an app. One, that will be extremely easy to use, intuitive, clear and NOT overwhelming at all. When it comes to technology, the answer is simple. I chose Flutter. I needed simple functionality. Only one screen and two dialogs. Screen showing all your items. Dialog letting you add a new item. Dialog that confirms you want to delete an item. My development suite. I implemented this stuff. The only one screen consisted of a showing each item in a . Tapping it would make the leading icon transform from a dash to check and change the background of the tile to green. Tapping again reversed that. Trailing widget was a remove that deleted the item from the list, after confirming it in a dialog. Besides that, there was a responsible for showing an Add new item dialog. ListView ListTile IconButton FloatingActionButton In case of an empty list, an Undraw illustration was shown. Items were saved in a list in the app’s state. After every action, the list was saved to Shared Preferences as JSON and loaded at the app startup. After that, I implemented localization, because I wanted the app to be in my mother language (Polish) and in English. This post helped me with it. _If you’re reading this, you probably already know the benefits of making an internationalized app, like expand your…_proandroiddev.com Flutter — Localization: step by step That was it in terms of the application itself. I created the launcher icon (orange text on white background) and wrote texts in Google Play Console. I published it to Alpha channel, sent to few friends and waited for their feedback. They didn’t encounter any problems and have liked its simplicity. I published first production version. I asked my classmates to test this out and showed it to my mom. Both my classmates and my mom liked it. Well, she was amazed by it and her colleagues to download it too. 😁 forced I didn’t like the screenshots and launcher icon of the app at all. When I had some time I played a little bit with mockups, icons, and text in Adobe Xd and came up with some decent icon and new “screenshots”. I’ve combined two free for commercial use icons from Iconfinder and made the Google Play and launcher icon. “Screenshots” contain free to use Google Pixel 2 XL mockup I found online. I published version 1.0.1 with updated launcher icon. Adobe Xd showing all my graphics for Google Play. After a few days, I thought of new features that I could add. The app must be as simple as it was, but there were some minor problems with it. My mom explained to me that once she had some items checked as complete and she tapped thinking, that it will delete only checked items, but she lost her whole list. delete all I changed the effect of the button to because I thought that it’s more intuitive behavior. I added an feature too. After you delete an item (or all completed items), a snackbar pops up for few seconds telling you about that and showing an button. delete all delete completed Undo Undo Under the hood, I reimplemented how the products were stored in the memory. I refactored using states to using . After that, I published version 1.1.0 that is currently the most up to date version of the application. ScopedModel You can download the app and check it out yourself! _When you make your shopping list you need simplicity. When you look at your shopping list you need clarity. Fast…_play.google.com Fast shopping — Apps on Google Play Download stats aren’t so bad after few days. I’m still looking for ways to promote my app to a broader audience. You can also find the source code on GitHub, stars are welcome. 😏 _Simple application for easy shopping list making, for everyone. — Albert221/FastShopping_github.com Albert221/FastShopping

From Solving a Problem in Google Play to Publishing with Flutter

Create a Progressive Web App using Vue, Cosmic JS, and GraphQL

An Android Developer’s Roadmap to React Native - Part 4 Photo by on Edgar Chaparro Unsplash If you come from native development background, you might be aware of a feature that both Android Studio and XCode provide to create different applications from the same code. These are known as flavors in Android Studio and targets in XCode. The idea is to create different packages with same core functionality but with minor difference in features. This can include different color schemes, branding or some functionalities unique to a package. A common example is creating a free and paid version of a same application, wherein the paid version has same core functionality as the free version with some added functionalities and features. Since the major functionality is the same there is no need to create different projects, but handle flavor/target specific changes at run-time. I hope you get the idea. If not follow these links to learn more. _Get started using Android Flavors to easily create variations in your app_proandroiddev.com Advanced Android Flavors Part 1 — Building White Label Apps on Android _How to create multiple applications that differentiate and share parts of the source code_medium.com Xcode “Targets” with multiple build configurations For simplicity, I will be using the Android term _flavors_ to represent different product builds in React Native. Now, lets move to the problem at hand The project I was working on relies heavily on build flavors, and React Native does not have inbuilt functionality to handle the same. Sure, you can create different flavors from but that only decides the build process, not the actual run-time changes that need to be made. So here is what I came up with, to bridge this gap between native and React Native. react-native-cli Setup Step 1: Configuration ( Native ) The first step is to setup product flavors in Android Studio and build targets in XCode. For the purpose of the tutorial, our application will be called . This application has two flavors: and . You can read the above mentioned articles to help you setup the configuration on Android Studio and Xcode. NoteTaker lite pro Step 2: Native Modules Once we have setup the flavors on the native side, we need a way to pass the product flavor identifier from native to react-native at run time. This, definitely requires us to create native modules or bridge methods for both Android and iOS. For simplicity, we will keep our flavor identifiers as strings. In Android, the flavor in stored in the and for iOS you can use from BuildConfig TargetName info.plist Take a look at the following documentation if you do not know what native modules are in React Native. _Sometimes an app needs access to a platform API that React Native doesn't have a corresponding module for yet. Maybe…_facebook.github.io Native Modules · React Native Step 3: Flavor.js Next, we create a JavaScript file that serves as a utility class for flavors in React Native. This file exposes a method to get the current product flavor from native and a variable that stores this information once it is fetched from native. Step 4: Colors.js Since our and versions have different color schemes, we create a file, that contains the flavor specific colors. Also this file exports a method to get the relevant colors based on the product flavor. lite pro Colors.js Our setup is now almost complete. We just need to call the build flavor method at the start of our react native application. But there is a catch. Since the build flavor is asynchronous, we need to ensure that the first component is mounted only when the flavor has been fetched from native. For this, we pass null in render method of our component initially, and on receiving callback from method we re-render the component by using buildFlavor setState Implementation Implementing flavor specific features Now that our flavor has been fetched from native and have access to our product flavor in any component, writing flavor specific code is a piece of cake. In fact, we have already seen such implementation in method. Consider a feature of adding images to notes which is only available in the flavor getThemeColors pro Implementing color schemes When defining styles for a component you can use two approaches:1. Directly apply styles using the styles prop2. Use StyleSheets The first method poses no problems since the styles are evaluated and applied at run time when that particular component is mounted. Thus the method is evaluated properly and we get the required colors. getThemeColors However, when using StyleSheets, the styles are evaluated when the file is loaded into the JavaScript run time environment. This means that even if the component is not mounted its styles are already evaluated. Thus, in our case, the delayed render of the component in after the flavor is fetched, fails to serve its purpose since even though the component is not mounted, its styles have already been evaluated. Thus, returns the wrong set of colors. To overcome this, we need to create StyleSheets for the component only when it is going to be mounted. We achieve this by creating StyleSheet in lifecycle method. App.js getThemeColors componentWillMount So now we have product flavor specific features and color schemes. The only drawback with this setup is that the styles and color schemes are now generated at run time rather than at compile time. Not that it has much of an impact on performance, but still, is a step behind. If you have any ideas to improve this setup, please feel free to share them with me either here in responses or via e-mail. This is the fourth part in the series “An Android Developer’s Roadmap to React Native”. You can read previous articles in the series by following these links: Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: https://medium.com/@rohanx96/an-android-developers-roadmap-to-react-native-part-1-5ec20cf93757 https://medium.com/@rohanx96/set-up-your-own-react-native-ide-f7d52c90da43 https://blog.usejournal.com/redux-an-intro-and-beyond-92d694bc314f

PHANDROID

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PHANDROID

phandroid.com

1-10 employees

Since 2007

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PHANDROID

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