Unlock the Power of Image Pickers in Flutter
The Importance of Image Pickers in Mobile Apps
Imagine a world where social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp didn’t allow users to upload profile pictures or share photos with friends. It’s hard to fathom, right? That’s because image pickers have become an essential component in mobile app development. In this tutorial, we’ll explore the world of image pickers in Flutter and learn how to create a robust image picker app.
What is Flutter Image Picker?
Flutter provides an image picker plugin that simplifies the process of selecting images from the device gallery or taking new pictures from the camera. This plugin exposes several helpful methods from the ImagePicker class, making it easy to integrate image picking functionality into your app.
Methods of the ImagePicker Class
The ImagePicker class offers three primary methods:
pickImage: Opens the image selection dialog, allowing users to select an image from the gallery or take a new picture from the camera.pickVideo: Enables users to pick a video from the gallery or record a new video using the camera.pickMultiImage: Allows users to select multiple images from the gallery.
Building a Flutter Image Picker App
To get started, make sure you have the following tools and binaries installed:
- Flutter SDK
- VS Code (optional)
- Android Studio
Next, create a new Flutter project using the command flutter create imagepickerprj. This will generate a basic Flutter project structure.
Adding the Image Picker Plugin
To add the image picker plugin, open the pubspec.yaml file and add the following dependency:
dependencies:
flutter:
sdk: flutter
image_picker: ^0.8.3+2
Then, run flutter pub get to pull in the latest dependency.
Creating Widgets
In the lib folder, create a new file called main.dart. This will be the entry point of our app. We’ll create two screens: HomePage and ImageFromGalleryEx.
HomePage
The HomePage widget will display two buttons: “Pick Image from Gallery” and “Pick Image from Camera”. When pressed, these buttons will open the ImageFromGalleryEx screen, passing the image source type as an argument.
ImageFromGalleryEx
The ImageFromGalleryEx widget will handle image picking from both the gallery and camera. It will display the picked image and allow users to select a new image or take a new picture.
Testing the App
Finally, let’s test our app! Open the Android Emulator and run the command flutter run. This will compile and build the project, and then run the app inside the emulator.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we’ve learned how to create a robust image picker app in Flutter using the image picker plugin. We’ve covered the importance of image pickers in mobile apps, the methods of the ImagePicker class, and how to build a Flutter project from scratch. Find the source code for this project on GitHub.