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Last updated on May 6, 2024
Last updated on Sep 11, 2023
Welcome to the magical world of Flutter layout concepts! Effective layout design forms the backbone of any application’s User Interface (UI). It sets up the visual structure, dictates the navigation, and profoundly influences the user’s perception of the product. In this blog post, we will unpack the bag of tricks employed to create an engaging layout using Flutter Layout Widgets. Flutter, with its rich and diverse range of widgets, empowers developers to build complex user interfaces with ease and efficiency. So, without further ado, let's dive into these intriguing layout concepts!
Flutter was introduced by Google as a powerful toolkit for crafting beautiful, natively compiled applications, from a single codebase, for mobile, web, and desktop. One of Flutter's primary perks is its widget-based architecture. Consider every widget as a building block and, with these blocks, developers construct an entire application.
In Flutter, everything is a widget, from a button to padding or margin, all are widgets. Similarly, a layout pattern in Flutter also involves widgets, tactfully arranged as per the requirements of an app design. These are grouped into either Single child widgets or Multiple child widgets, based on whether they support multiple child layout widgets or not.
For crafting engaging layouts, Flutter introduces a rich set of layout widgets, such as Row, Column, Stack, and many others. Each widget offers special layout functionality, making it easier to style and align the interface's elements. Understanding these basic layout concepts is crucial for building complex widgets and visual layouts in Flutter.
Flutter layout widgets follow a pattern where these are structured declaratively, in a tree-like structure (called the widget tree). In this parent-child relation, the parent widget's properties control the arrangement and positioning of its child widgets in the widget tree.
While discussing widgets, it's essential to know that widgets are divided into two main categories: Visible widgets (like Text, Image) that depict part of the user interface visually, and Layout Widgets (like Row, Column, Stack) that control how the visible widgets and other layout widgets appear.
Creating a user interface in Flutter happens as a hierarchical arrangement of these widgets. The structure is defined as a widget tree, where the root widget branches off into multiple child widgets and so on.
There are quite a few fundamental layout widgets that you would need to get familiar with as you delve more into the world of Flutter layout. Let’s get acquainted with the key heroes behind the crafting of a beautiful UI with Flutter.
The basic layout widgets to consider are the Row and Column widget. The Row widget arranges its children widgets in a horizontal direction and the Column widget arranges its children widgets in the vertical direction.
For instance, consider the following example:
1 class MyApp extends StatelessWidget { 2 const MyApp({Key? key}) : super(key: key); 3 4 @override 5 Widget build(BuildContext context) { 6 return MaterialApp( 7 home: Scaffold( 8 body: Center( 9 child: Column( 10 children: <Widget>[ 11 Text('Welcome to Flutter Blog!'), 12 Text('Enjoy the journey of learning Flutter.'), 13 ], 14 ), 15 ), 16 ), 17 ); 18 } 19 } 20 void main() => runApp(MyApp()); 21
In our Dart code, we arrange two Text widget children vertically using the Column widget.
A Text Widget comes into play to display a small piece of rich text with the textual styles defined in a part of the widget tree. It helps to present the text data on Flutter applications in a simple manner.
1 Text( 2 'Hello World', 3 textAlign: TextAlign.center, 4 overflow: TextOverflow.ellipsis, 5 style: TextStyle(fontWeight: FontWeight.bold), 6 ) 7
In the Dart code mentioned above, the Text widget is used to display the effective "Hello World" in the center of the screen overflowed with ellipses.
An Icon Widget is brought into action to display a collection of graphic symbols to help users navigate the app and perform specific actions. It provides a user-friendly way to represent an action, a state, or to denote visual symbolization.
1 Icon( 2 Icons.favorite, 3 color: Colors.pink, 4 size: 24.0, 5 semanticLabel: 'Text to announce in accessibility modes', 6 ) 7
In this snippet, an Icon widget showing a favorite icon is incorporated, which is then colored pink and given a size of 24.0, with a semantic label for accessibility.
An Image Widget comes handy when you wish to display an image, whether from assets, network, or a local file storage. It is a way to quickly and efficiently load all different types of images into your app.
1 Image.network('https://url-to-the-image.jpg') 2
Here, an Image widget has been used to load and display an image from a network location using a URL.
A SizedBox Widget usually comes into play when you want to give the child widget a specified width and height or when you want to create an empty space that has a specific size.
1 const SizedBox(width: 200.0, height: 300.0) 2
In the code snippet above, a SizedBox widget is being used to specify a box with a particular width and height.
A Spacer widget comes in handy when you have a fair amount of blank space to conceive between widgets. It uses the Expanded widget under-the-hood to create flexible space in a Row or Column.
1 Row( 2 children: <Widget>[ 3 Text('Begin'), 4 Spacer(), // Defaults to a flex of one. 5 Text('Middle'), 6 // Gives twice the space between Middle and End than Begin and Middle. 7 Spacer(flex: 2), 8 Text('End'), 9 ], 10 ) 11
Above, the Row widget contains three text widgets. Two Spacer widgets are inserted between these text widgets providing an expanded space between the Text widgets.
In Flutter, the layout framework allows you to position a child widget within a parent widget. To control the position and size of a child widget, Flutter provides several attributes such as mainAxisAlignment, crossAxisAlignment, and mainAxisSize.
mainAxisSize property controls the amount of space the Row and Column can occupy in the main axis. The 'main axis' of a Row widget is horizontal and the 'main axis' of a Column widget is vertical.
mainAxisAlignment property defines how the children are arranged in the parent's main axis. For example, you can use MainAxisAlignment.spaceAround, MainAxisAlignment.spaceBetween and others to get different effects.
crossAxisAlignment property is useful in the alignment of child widgets in the cross axis. The 'cross axis' of a Row is vertical and for a Column it’s horizontal.
While the mainAxisSize deals with controlling the space that child widgets can acquire, mainAxisAlignment and crossAxisAlignment determine the alignment of child widgets. These three properties are the primary tools to create attractive layouts in Flutter.
The Flexible widget wraps another widget and controls how that widget flexes with respect to its siblings in the parent widget. You can use the Flexible widget to control how a widget flexes during layout assignment. A Flexible widget allows you to control the flex factor and fit of its child widget.
1 Row( 2 children: [ 3 Flexible( 4 fit: FlexFit.tight, 5 flex: 2, 6 child: Container(color: Colors.yellow), 7 ), 8 Flexible( 9 fit: FlexFit.loose, 10 child: Container(color: Colors.green), 11 ), 12 ], 13 ) 14
In this code block, we see two Flexible widgets in action. The first Flexible wraps a yellow Container and takes two-thirds of available screen space because we set flex: 2. The second Flexible wraps a green Container and takes up the remaining space.
The Expanded widget works in a similar manner as Flexible but with a tight fit, which makes the child widget fill the empty spaces. This technique enables the creation of designs that visually adapt to different screen sizes, orientations, or even changes in the window dimensions on Flutter web.
1 Row( 2 children: <Widget>[ 3 Expanded(child: Text('Hello Flutter Developers!')), 4 Expanded(child: Text('Welcome to the Flutter Blog Post.')), 5 ], 6 ) 7
In this Row above, the Expanded widgets equally divide the entire row's width between them.
With an aim to explore the practical implementation of Flutter layout concepts, let's walk through creating a simple layout involving some of the most used layout widgets. This layout will consist of a Column widget of Image, Text, and Row widget.
First, let's understand the steps we will follow to create this basic layout.
Now, let's translate this step-by-step procedure into Flutter code.
1 Widget build(BuildContext context) { 2 return MaterialApp( 3 home: Scaffold( 4 body: Container( 5 padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0), 6 child: Column( 7 mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center, 8 children: [ 9 Image.network('https://example.com/image.jpg'), 10 SizedBox(height:16), 11 Row( 12 mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center, 13 children: [ 14 Text('Hello Flutter'), 15 Text('Welcome to Flutter Layout Concepts Blog Post'), 16 Text('Enjoy Flutter'), 17 ], 18 ), 19 ], 20 ), 21 ), 22 ), 23 ); 24 } 25
With the right combination of widgets, Flutter enables the creation of complex user interfaces that can adapt to different screen sizes and orientations. As a developer, you’re free to arrange, nest, and style these widgets to have your UI ideas come to life!
This sums up our walk-through on creating a simple Flutter layout using a variety of layout widgets. The journey does not stop here! There's plenty more to explore and experiment with in the vast expanse of the Flutter framework.
Having explored Flutter layout in a piece meal approach, it's time to orchestrate the whole ensemble. A layout widget influences the position, size and arrangement of its child widgets. And this ultimately determines how an application looks and works.
Leveraging concepts explained above allows you to design complex user interfaces with precision and efficiency. However, it's also necessary to refine your understanding progressively, as you navigate the complexity and depth of the Flutter layout framework. Experience and practice will deepen your understanding of when and how to use, and importantly, not use, certain layout widgets.
Flutter empowers developers to create intricate, high-quality user interfaces for all screen sizes and orientations. Exploiting these capabilities require you to understand Flutter's broad widget catalog, layout mechanism and underlying principles.
Remember that widgets are the core concept behind building layouts in Flutter. Whether it's the root widget, single child widget, or multiple child widgets, every widget represents an immutable description of part of the user interface. The trick to mastering Flutter layout lies in understanding how widgets render on the screen and how they react to changes.
Your task as a Flutter developer is to seamlessly assemble these widgets to create visual shapes, animations, interactions, and other UI elements that the user encounters bearing in mind composability & reactiveness, the guiding principles of the Flutter layout framework.
In this blog post, we embarked on a fascinating journey through Flutter layout concepts. We started with examining the core widgets involved in crafting layouts, took a walk down the aisle of managing widget positions, and finally orchestrated the widgets to create a simple Flutter layout.
Jumping into the vast landscape of Flutter guiding principles, methodologies, and layout widgets are the starting point for creating intuitive and versatile layouts. The more you play with different widgets, experimenting with their features, and understanding the impact they have on a layout, the more proficient you'll become.
Your next step should be to explore more complex widgets and layout patterns that Flutter offers. Enhance your learning curve by discovering and trying out the different layout examples available in the Flutter documentation or in the community.
The official Flutter documentation is the best place to get started with and understand Flutter's wealth of widgets and layout capabilities. It provides comprehensive and organized content on every widget discussed in this article and more.
There are plenty of useful resources available both online and offline to aid your learning journey in Flutter layouts. 'Flutter for Beginners', 'Learn Flutter and Dart to Build iOS and Android Apps', are some highly recommended books and online courses.
Lastly, interactive platforms can significantly enhance your learning process by allowing you to code and see the result in real-time. Websites like 'Flutter Layout Cheat Sheet' offer such utilities.
Keep exploring and experimenting with new layout structures. Remember effective layouts significantly enhance the user interface, so your users will thank you for your efforts to learn and apply these fundamental layout structures!
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