Flutter – a versatile development kit for multiplatform app development
With devices like smartphones and tablets in everyone’s lives, good mobile app development tools are in high demand. One such tool is Flutter. It can help the development team build, test and deploy professional mobile, desktop, web and embedded apps from a single codebase.
What is the Flutter app development framework?
Flutter is an open-source SDK (Software Development Kit) that allows the development of natively-compiled applications for multiple platforms from one codebase. It enables the building of quality mobile apps for both Android and iOS.
However, Flutter can also be used for developing desktop, web applications and embedded apps. It includes powerful graphics and animation libraries that help build responsive interfaces for touchscreen devices.
Google introduced this cross-platform development kit in 2017. It’s built on the Dart programming language. One of the assets of developing in Flutter is that it provides a fast workflow and hot reloading, allowing for quick code iteration.
What are the essential features of Flutter?
As with every development tool, Flutter has its distinctive features. Flutter development has become popular for multiple reasons. Here are some of the most significant features of Flutter SDK.
Dart – the Flutter programming language
As mentioned before, Flutter is based on the Dart programming language. It’s a client-optimised language for fast cross-platform applications. It supports compiling into the device’s native language for deploying fast apps. Dart allows one to build apps with Flutter and has a relatively low learning curve.
Hot reload
This practical function allows making changes within the application without restarting it. Its working mechanism is based on injecting updated source code files into the running Dart Virtual Machine (VM). After updating the classes with new features and versions of fields and functions, the effects of the changes become visible.
Flexible UI design
Using the principles of Google Material design guidelines helps build apps with expressive and flexible user interface design. With that, Flutter developers can create sleek and beautiful UIs that users will enjoy.
Native performance
Similar to React Native, Flutter code compiles to the native one. This allows giving apps optimal performance on both Android and iOS operating systems. This allows quick execution with flexibility in the app’s design.
Open source
The open-source nature of the Flutter framework can make it more accessible for beginner developers and allows everyone to contribute to its development. The growing community can cooperate in creating solutions and solving different problems.
How does Flutter work?
When working with this SDK framework, we must familiarise ourselves with Flutter widgets. They are the basic building blocks for building a single- or multi-platform Flutter app. They are used to create visual and functional components, including stateless and stateful widgets.
Stateful widgets vs stateless widgets in Flutter apps
Since widgets are the base component of developing a single codebase-based mobile and web applications, it’s essential to distinguish the two types of used widgets.
Stateless Flutter widgets
Stateless widgets in Flutter are those that state cannot be changed once they are built. They are then immutable, and no changes in the variables, icons, buttons, or retrieving data can alter the state of the app.
Stateful Flutter widgets
Analogically, stateful widgets are those that state can be changed after building them. They can be changed as necessary within their lifetime. The state of the Flutter app can vary with different sets of variables, inputs, and data altered within a stateful widget.
What are the advantages of using Flutter?
Flutter is one of the development tools available for mobile development. Certain features distinguish it from the other frameworks and kits. What are the most notable advantages of using Flutter? Among others, they include:
- It’s fast: based on Dart – a programming language that compiles into the native code, Flutter doesn’t need the JavaScript bridge. It helps build apps that are fast and responsive.
- It enables multi-platform app development: programmers can use a single codebase to create applications for both Android and iOS. It saves time in developing apps from scratch. Flutter can also be used for web development.
- It contains an extensive set of widgets: as mentioned before, widgets are the basic building blocks in Flutter. The wide variety of available widgets allows for creating custom and stylish user interfaces.
- It’s free and open-source: a growing community of developers can contribute to the growth of Flutter due to its open-source nature. Some many helpful resources and tutorials that can help to dive in. Moreover, Flutter is free, and no license charges exist, which may be ideal for new app development startups.
- It has significant and stable support: Google has been a huge backer of Flutter since its introduction. They keep working on improving it with regular and valuable updates. This continuous improvement helps to secure the framework’s lifespan.
- There are multiple examples of success: apps like Google Pay (now Wallet), Google Ads, Reflectly, Xianyu by Alibaba, and Postmuse. They allow us to get an insight into the capabilities of Flutter before we start using it.
- Easy debugging: Dart is equipped with various Flutter tools for easy debugging, like Dart Analyzer and the DevTools suite for debug mode.
- Automated testing: The Dart language supports automated testing, and Flutter itself is equipped with its own set of tools for testing. It allows for consistent improvements of the developed apps.
- It utilises both hardware and software: Flutter offers a range of capabilities for using software and hardware like camera, GPS and fingerprint scanner to build apps with different features.
- It adapts to different screens: apps built with Flutter can be adapted to different screen sizes and resolutions. They work on various screen sizes and aspect ratios. It makes them suitable for both phones and tablets.
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React Native – a handy framework for mobile apps
React Native is an open-source JavaScript framework for developing user interfaces and complete mobile apps. One of the reasons behind its popularity is its multiplatform design capabilities. That’s why one of the slogans behind React Native is “Learn once, write anywhere”. This versatile framework is gaining momentum and popularity among web and mobile developers.
What exactly is React Native?
React Native framework allows building applications on multiple platforms utilising the same code. It was introduced by the Facebook engineering team in 2015. It bases on React and brings its best features to developing mobile apps. React Native uses JavaScript to compile the user interface. However, it uses the native system views.
Moreover, it supports native code development in the language native to the specific operating system of iOS and Android. iOS developers primarily use Swift and Objective-C, while the most popular choices for Android apps are Java and Kotlin.
React vs React Native
React technologies have many faces. Developers are familiar with ReactJS, React and React Native. Since there are so many of them, it might need to be clarified which one is which. Let’s make a short breakdown of all of them.
React and ReactJS
There is no difference between React and ReactJS. Adding JS at the end of the names of some libraries or frameworks just highlights that they work with JavaScript. ReactJS is exactly this indication, and the library’s full name is now commonly shortened to just React.
Differences between React and React Native
The critical difference between React and React Native is that the first one is used for creating interfaces in web development (those apps that run on a web browser). The latter is applied to building native apps in a cross-platform setting, helping create platform-specific versions for Android and iOS.
Moreover, React uses DOM to render browser code, while React Native uses Native API to generate components for mobile native development. It can wrap existing native code and interact with native APIs via React’s declarative UI paradigm and JavaScript language.
React is an open-source JavaScript library for developing single-page web applications. React Native is a JS framework with a single code base for developing single- or cross-platform apps.
How does React Native development work?
The idea behind the React Native framework is to combine the two pieces: JavaScript and native code (Java/Kotlin for Android and Objective-C/Swift for iOS) to make them work together. The native components are executed directly on the device, while the JavaScript part of the code would need a virtual machine for the execution.
iOS and Android devices have their means to aid with React Native app development. iOS has a built-in JavaScript engine called JavaScriptCore, written in C++, to compile and run the JavaScript code. Android devices don’t have a built-in solution akin to iOS. However, JavaScriptCore can be brought along with the Native framework.
During build time, the code written in Java or Objective-C is compiled into Java and C++ binary files, and the JS code will be bundled using the Metro bundler, optimised for React Native.
What are the essential features of mobile app development with React Native?
This widely adopted framework allows for building apps that are not only of high quality but also include more complex features and building user interfaces. React Native comes with a range of handy features that include:
Write once use anywhere
One of the most notable features of React Native, as mentioned earlier, is cross-platform development solutions. Code written once can be applied on multiple platforms and operating systems, including Android, iOS or Windows. It means no need to build two separate native apps for different mediums.
Focus on UI
User experience and UI design are significant concerns in the mobile development process. React Native lets build mobile apps with a high focus on the user interface. High responsiveness and impressive rendering capabilities for creating the app’s interface make the React Native community fond of it.
Easy to learn for those who know JavaScript
JavaScript is considered one of the primary programming languages. For those native mobile developers who already know it, learning React Native will be significantly easier, greatly lowering its learning curve. And since beginner and advanced programmers eagerly add JS to their stack, learning this framework won’t be too much effort. Using the native components also helps in mastering it.
A strong community that has already tried and tested it thoroughly
React native developer community has grown exponentially since its release. It quickly became a favourite to develop mobile applications. A large and dedicated community of software developers building software in React Native means that every question or doubt raised about the app’s performance or the framework will be addressed and answered, and it may result in faster development.
Why should you consider developing a React Native mobile app?
Putting it all together, using React Native platform can be a good choice for multiple reasons. It can be learnt quickly under the right circumstances. It uses native elements of the mobile application device language in both iOS and Android development.
This mobile framework also puts the right amount of focus on the UI design, which React Native developers highly value. Its cross-platform capabilities also eliminate choosing between developing an iOS app or an Android one, as both can be built using one code.
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