Flutter Remote Meetup #13 | FlutterBLR X GeekyAnts
As always, the recent Flutter Remote Meetup, organised by GeekyAnts in collaboration with Flutter BLR, was a swirl of exciting and stimulating conversations revolving around the newest developments in Flutter since the grand release of Flutter 2.0. This session will have the panel keeping you engaged for two hours with a lineup of talks where you can explore and gain insight into topics like the importance of Flutter Starter, FCM messages, principles of 3D design and running Dart on ARM Servers.
The following is a summary of all the events that transpired during the Meetup:
Why Do We Need Flutter Starter: Madhav Bansal
The first discourse about what’s new in the Flutter world was an introduction to Flutter Starter, GeekyAnts’ latest OS contribution, while exploring certain cases where it has been used to make the development process much more responsive. The speaker- Madhav Bansal, who was one of the brains behind the project, talked in detail about the product which is a starter kit containing essential components such as API configuration, state management, style guide, utility tools, an organised folder structure and most importantly a feature to test and deploy your application. The reasoning behind this creation was to make the development process simpler for production ready apps with the provision of an inbuilt boilerplate code. Madhav explained further about folder structure which holds the api-sdk containing the necessary configuration, a shared folder with common modules within the application, app components like screen, configuration and utilities as well as elucidating how they work in tandem through examples using emulators or mobile app screens.
Implementing FCM Messages On Flutter: Ganesh SP
The next speech on the agenda was a step-by-step tutorial on implementing Firebase cloud Messaging, a free cross-platform messaging solution, by Ganesh SP, a Flutter enthusiast and a software technologist affiliated with Philips. He started off with the topic by explaining what FCM and how it can be used to trigger notification and data messages, apply versatile message targeting and send messages from client apps. While the package runs best on servers or cloud-based services, Ganesh shed light on the subject by explaining practically through the help of an example on how to set up the platform, create an SHA-1 key to help with debugging, configure the analytics and add a project to enable console based triggering for composing notifications. He demonstrated the following examples in three different scenarios where the application was active, inactive and when the app was running in the background.
Perfecting 3D Design On Flutter: Manas Pratap
Manas Pratap Thakur, a seasoned developer from GeekyAnts who is well known for being a blockchain aficionado, was the next in line and he spoke about his latest work on implementing 3D design on Flutter applications by three dimensionalising widgets and set frame for each gesture value to control the animations better. His presentation was made explicable through an example of an OS image on which he places a stack, forms a scene and maps the movement of the animation using a gesture detector. He also justifies why he prefers to animate on Flutter as this platform doesn't mimic native SDK rendering engines and instead focuses on an approach that many gaming engines use. Manas’ presentation explores how to achieve the desired animatic effect by rotating, scaling, translating, dragging and setting depth to the object instead of using preset software packages which have their own limitations.
Exploring Dart On ARM Servers: Chris Swan
The final talk for the day was on the topic of running Dart on ARM servers by Chris Swan from The @Company, a company which seeks to make the internet a safer place by assuring data privacy. He started the discussion about how ARM servers are being extensively used globally due to the fact that it does a great job at complementing Flutter applications while being extensively utilised for cloud computing and IoT. Swan thought it suitable to adapt ARM into his company’s functioning as they use secondary servers which store and manage how applications share data in the cloud, which would further help with the organisation’s data management policies. The goal behind this decision was to allow flexibility and to give people the choice to implement ARM when using the application while also rendering the app to be ready to run secondaries on other platforms like Amazon.
The meetup was informative and covered many interesting happenings in the Flutter community. The session was brought to a close with the panelists addressing the audience’s questions.
You can watch the entire event below: