Unlock the Power of Camera Functionality in Your Flutter App
Are you tired of settling for the default camera app on mobile devices? Do you want to provide a unique user interface and add custom functionalities to your Flutter app? Look no further! In this article, we’ll guide you through implementing basic camera functionalities using the official camera package, which supports both Android and iOS platforms.
App Overview
Before diving into the code, let’s take a look at the app we’re going to build. Our final app will feature:
- Capture quality selector
- Zoom control
- Exposure control
- Flash mode selector
- Button for flipping camera (rear cam to front cam, and vice versa)
- Button for capturing image
- Toggle for shifting from image mode to video mode
- Video mode controls (start, pause, resume, stop)
- Last captured image or video preview
- Retrieve image/video files
Getting Started
Create a new Flutter project using the following command:
flutter create my_camera_app
Open the project using your favorite IDE, and add the following dependencies to your pubspec.yaml file:
dependencies:
camera: ^0.8.1+7
video_player: ^2.1.14
path_provider: ^2.0.2
Retrieve Available Cameras
In the main.dart file, define a global variable called cameras where we’ll store the list of available cameras. This will help us easily reference them later.
Initializing the Camera
Create a new file called camera_screen.dart and define the CameraScreen stateful widget inside it. Define a controller for the camera and a value for the isCameraInitialized Boolean variable.
Handling Camera Lifecycle States
Running the camera on any device is a memory-hungry task, so how you handle freeing up the memory resources and when that occurs is important. We’ll use the WidgetsBindingObserver mixin and manage the lifecycle changes by overriding the didChangeAppLifecycleState() method.
Adding a Camera Preview
Now that we’ve finished initializing and managing the camera state, we can define a basic user interface for previewing the camera output. We’ll use the buildPreview() method from the Flutter camera plugin to display the camera output.
Adding Functionalities
Let’s add some functionalities to our camera app:
- Capture quality selector
- Zoom control
- Exposure control
- Flash mode selector
- Flip camera toggle
- Capturing images
- Toggle between image and video mode
- Video recording
Common Problems and Questions
While implementing the camera inside your app, you may face certain issues. We’ll cover some common problems and questions, such as:
- Solving stretched camera preview
- Adding an overlay to the camera
- Checking camera permission status
- Setting camera focus
Wrapping Up
Congratulations! You have now created a full-fledged camera app with all the basic functionalities. You can even add custom features to this app now and customize the user interface to match your app’s design palette.