News
Major Update to Flutter Firebase Plugins
The Flutter Firebase plugins are going through a major update, starting with Core, Authentication and Firestore. Since these changes will result in deprecated APIs, if you're using the Firebase plugins, you'll want to review this post by Chris Sells to bring yourself up to speed on the changes. The good news is that the changes also come with extensive documentation and tutorials, which should ease any transition you're required to make here.
Tutorials
Byteconf Flutter 2020
If you missed any of the recent Byteconf Flutter sessions, no need to panic. They're still available in this convenient YouTube playlist. These sessions cover a range of topics, including the recently-introduced Interactive Viewer widget, GraphQL with simple state management, and more!
Stripe Checkout in Mobile Flutter App
If you're selling a physical product in your app (rather than a digital service), you'll want to integrate with a third-party processor to handle payments.
This handy tutorial by Marcin Szałek walks through the process of integrating your app with Stripe Checkout, including sample code.
Platform Channel Examples
If you haven't yet had the need to use platform-specific hardware capabilities in your iOS or Android Flutter apps, this article by Ayush Bherwani from his experience with the Google Summer of Code provides a great introduction.
Tips & Tricks
Flutter Cookbook
With all of the great Flutter resources out there, sometimes it's easy to overlook some of the really helpful official resources. This Flutter Cookbook from the official flutter.dev website is one such example. It contains all sorts of samples on "how to do x," and covers such topics as animation, forms, networking, and more. Highly recommended, even if you're experienced with Flutter development.
Architecture
Why I Switched Away from Google Firestore
Since your backend architecture is one of the most difficult things to change once you've shipped the initial version of your app, it's good to make sure that whatever backend tech you're committing to, you understand the pros and cons of the choice you're making.
With the news of updates coming to the Firebase plugins, it might be helpful to also get a contrarian point of view on Firestore, in this case from a pretty well-thought out article by Spencer Pauly.
Flutter + Firestore: You May be Using It Wrong
Since we're on a roll this week with Firestore, I thought it might be worth highlighting this article by Michel Feinstein, with some helpful tips on keeping maintainability and testability in mind as you're developing your Firestore-based app.
AWS Amplify Brings AWS Cloud to Flutter
This is still in developer preview, but if you're looking for an alternative to Google's Firebase plugins, it appears that Amazon is beginning to make some inroads into making life easier for Flutter developers who prefer to use AWS on the backend for authentication, analytics, and storage.
// From Mark
Sharing Knowledge
One of the things I've noticed about the Flutter community is how willing developers are to share their Flutter knowledge with others. So much of my own knowledge of Flutter has come from other Flutter developers, and I'm grateful that they were willing to share their craft and talent publicly for my benefit.
I hope we can all keep this in mind when we come across someone new to the Flutter community. Helping someone new come up to speed is a great way to "give back," and I hope we're on the lookout for these opportunities when they come along.
Who have you helped this week?
Mark Winters