Flutter App Development: How to Write for iOS and Android at Once

Create apps for iOS and Android phones and tablets using Flutter, a Google framework that produces two outputs for a single app. Let's face it, creating iOS apps using Apple tools such as Swift and Xcode is extremely complicated. Creating Android apps with Kotlin and Android Studio is just as difficult. This book breaks down complex concepts and tasks into easily digestible segments with examples, full-color pictures, and hands-on labs with starters and solutions.

As you work through the accompanying lab exercises, you'll learn the Dart programming language; the entire Flutter development toolchain; the differences between stateful and stateless widgets; and a working knowledge of the architecture of apps. You’ll work with themes and styles, develop custom widgets, and even teach your app to respond to gestures like taps, swipes, and pinches. You’ll also design, create, and control the layout of your app. Create tools to handle form data entry from users. And ultimately create killer multiscreen apps with navigation, menus, and tabs.

You’ll see that with Flutter, you can write an app one time that produces two outputs: one that can be submitted to the Apple App Store and another that can be uploaded to the Google Play Store. In short, one code creates the same app that runs on iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, virtually all devices. And if you like, it can also create a version that runs on Macs, Windows, Linux, and in browsers!

Flutter App Development explains difficult topics in plain, everyday terms that simplify the process of writing mobile apps.

What You'll Learn

• Get the most out of great Flutter widgets
• Create custom widgets, both stateless and stateful
• Exercise expert control over your Flutter layouts
• Manage data in stateful widgets and with libraries like Riverpod
• Exchange data actively with RESTful API servers

Who This Book Is For

Developers who have coded in JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, C++, or any similar language. Managers, product owners, and business analysts who need to understand Flutter's capabilities. 

Rap Payne started Agile Gadgets, a mobile app development company in 2003. Through it, Rap is a consultant, trainer, and entrepreneur who has written apps, mentored developers, and taught software development classes for Fortune 500 companies like Boeing, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Honda, CVS, Chase, HP, Lockheed, Exxon-Mobil, Lowe's, Nike, J.C. Penney, USAA, Raytheon, and government agencies like the NSA, the FBI, US Air Force, Navy, Army, NASA, Britain's GCHQ, Canada's postal service, and several provincial governments, to name a few.

As a professional mentor and trainer, Rap has mastered teaching highly complex ideas in easy-to-understand ways. And as a real-world developer, he understands the need to teach these topics using practical and realistic examples and exercises. Rap and his wife Becky have been married for over 30 years. In addition to their five children (all home educated), Rap is a spiritual father to many younger men whom he has mentored over the years. Rap is a middle-of-the-pack marathoner, triathlete, and power lifter.