Building Customizable Card Widgets in Flutter
Unlocking the Power of Widgets
When it comes to building fully functional apps with Flutter, combining various components is key. These building blocks, known as widgets, form the basis of views and screens in a Flutter app. By mastering the art of combining widgets, you can create beautifully designed screens that elevate your app’s user experience.
The Two Types of Flutter Widgets
There are two primary types of Flutter widgets: stateless and stateful. Stateless widgets are immutable, meaning their information remains constant throughout their lifetime. Stateful widgets, on the other hand, can change during runtime, allowing their properties to be updated, changed, or deleted.
Creating a Custom Card Widget
In this tutorial, we’ll build a reusable card widget that functions as a business card, complete with an image, job description, and company name. This will help you understand the techniques involved in combining widgets to create a single, fully customizable widget.
Getting Started
To begin, create a new Flutter project using the command flutter create my_app. Next, create a default MaterialApp by defining a stateless widget called MyApp. This will give us access to various properties and components in material design.
Designing the Card Widget
Our goal is to create a card widget that can be used anywhere in the application. We’ll start by creating a new stateless widget called BusinessCard. Since none of the properties of the card widget should change during its runtime, we’ll use a stateless widget.
Customizing the Card Widget
The Card class provides several properties that can be used to modify the card’s visuals, such as color, shape, border, and position. For our example, we’ll use the color and elevation properties to style our card. We’ll also use the Container widget to set the height and width of the card.
Building the Card Layout
To create the layout of the card, we’ll use a combination of Column and Row widgets. The Column widget will align its children vertically, while the Row widget will align its children horizontally. We’ll also use the Text widget to display the person’s name, job description, and company name.
Adding Spacing and Images
To add spacing between the texts, we’ll use the SizedBox widget. We’ll also use the CircleAvatar widget to display an image from the internet.
Launching the App
Once we’ve built the basic layout of the card, we can launch the app using the command flutter run. With the combination of the built-in card widget, container, text, row, and column widgets, we’ve created a reusable card widget that can be used anywhere in the application.
The Power of Widgets
By combining the right widgets, you can create beautifully designed and completely reusable widgets readily available for use anywhere in your app. Remember, widgets are building blocks, and the right combination can bring out the best in your app.