Flutter to Firebase Hosting Github Workflow

As soon as a Flutter project gains traction (or I’ve convinced myself that it will eventually gain traction), I like to set up a CI/CD pipeline so I can focus more on app development and less on manually deploying all of my changes to prod. This article in particular will provide an overview of the Github workflow I typically use for my Flutter projects that use Firebase Hosting. The Basics For the simplest projects that don’t require environments, variables, or Slack notifications, the workflow is straightforward. Below is an outline of what it does: ...

September 29, 2024 · 4 min · 756 words · Me
Psychedelic painter

Generating Images With Dalle

I’ve recently been working on an app with my wife called “Abi’s Recipes”. The app, designed for mobile and TV, aims to be the Netflix of recipes, with a focus on beautiful images and a simple interface. We wanted to generate images for the recipes that we don’t have photos for, and we wanted to do it in a way that was fun and creative. That’s where DALL-E comes in. ...

September 29, 2024 · 5 min · 885 words · Me

An Intro to Route Guards in Flutter

Hey! Don’t go there! Navigation in a mobile app is a bit more involved than pushing a route here and popping a route there. Some routes should only be viewed by a user who is authenticated while others are available to the public. Some routes will only behave and display properly if the user has an active internet connection while others show static assets that never change. Is it possible to verify these requirements are met before loading each new route? With Route Guards, anything is possible. ...

September 17, 2022 · 3 min · 600 words · Me

Authentication in Flutter Apps using the @Protocol

If you’ve spent any amount of time developing mobile apps, you’re probably well aware of how public “private” data really is. Cloud databases like , , and protect their front gates with robust security measures like authentication keys, security rules, user roles, and field-specific restrictions. From the outside, these databases are fortresses with more than enough artillery to prevent people from seeing each other’s data. The issue however, is that the castle-keepers can see everything that gets brought into the castle. Your name. Your contact info. Your personal information. It all exists on a database that is not absolutely private and that should give you pause. Below is a screenshot from a test app I made using Google’s Firestore as a database and yeah…as the owner of the database I can peruse the user records at my leisure. ...

September 17, 2022 · 11 min · 2214 words · Me

Build this blog

Build this Blog Medium. Hashnode. Wordpress. Ghost. Log Rocket. There are a thousand blogging platforms that want your content, knowledge, and time. I say nay! In this article I’ll lay out all the steps you need to build this exact website and host your content on GitHub pages. What you’ll get: A blogging website hosted on GitHub The Hugo PaperMod theme Menus to filter content by categories and tags Full text search Tracking with Google Analytics ...

September 17, 2022 · 3 min · 638 words · Me

Continuous Animations in Flutter

If your app ain’t animating, users ain’t engaging. It’s a simple law of mobile app development that gets less attention than it deserves. Users want the impression that your app is alive — a living, breathing creation that does more than respond to taps and scrolls. Dynamically changing gradients, bouncing dots, and widgets that push at their boundaries like animals in a cage all give your app a personality that users will be thinking about long after they lock their screens. ...

September 17, 2022 · 4 min · 803 words · Me

Displaying Videos in Flutter from a URL

Displaying Videos in Flutter from a URL With the Stacked architecture In this article, I will be explaining how to display a video directly from a URL in Flutter (although any video URL will work). If you’re interested in saving videos to Cloud Storage, check out my previous article on that exact subject. Uploading Images to Cloud Storage Using Flutter If you do have videos in Cloud Storage, I’m assuming you’ll eventually want to display them. Maybe you need to show a video thumbnail on one screen and then the full video on another. Maybe you want to embed a video in a tutorial to explain how an app feature works. Whatever it is, your question is the same: How do I display my video? ...

September 17, 2022 · 5 min · 1022 words · Me

Enhanced Enums in Flutter 3

Enums were good. Now they’re great. Flutter 3 Flutter 3.0 was announced at Google IO yesterday and as can be expected from a major version jump, there were a lot of new features to dig through. A few of the big ones: Stable support for macOS and Linux apps Improved Firebase integration Material 3 support Foldable phone support iOS release improvements Performance improvements for the web Theme extensions You can read more about the full release in the announcement here and if you’re someone that wants to see everything that was added, check out the release notes. ...

September 17, 2022 · 3 min · 513 words · Me

Flutter Efficiently

Flutter Newbies Start Here If you’re new to Flutter development, I’d recommend starting with something a little less involved. I used this book to learn the Flutter language: Beginning Flutter: A Hands On Guide to App Development And this one to get started with mobile app development: Android Studio 3.4 Development Essentials — Kotlin Edition: Developing Android Apps Using Android Studio 3.4, Kotlin and Jetpack …And Let’s Go Good morning, afternoon, and evening to all the Flutter developers in the world and welcome to the blog post that’s going to make you love Google’s cross-platform development language more than you already do! For those of you that aren’t familiar with the number one rising language for mobile development, get familiar. This language is perfect for creating beautiful mobile applications for Android, iOS, and web, and it has a community that is expanding like California wildfires. ...

September 17, 2022 · 7 min · 1429 words · Me

Flutter: Build an IPA

If you’d like to distribute your Flutter app to iOS-using testers via Firebase Distribution, you’ll need to build IPA files. IPA files are simply iOS Application files that behave like APK or app bundles on Android. Unlike APK or app bundles however, you can’t just run a flutter build command and create an IPA. Build App Bundle: flutter build appbundle Build APK: flutter build apk This article will show you the fastest way to build an IPA for your Flutter app. ...

September 17, 2022 · 3 min · 632 words · Me