Open-source has changed the way software is written and distributed. It has played an essential role in making software development easy, fun and more approachable. Flutter, being an open-source cross-platform mobile app development platform, has a thriving community with developers putting their efforts across the globe to make it more successful. It’s not just Google who is responsible to take Flutter further, it’s the community as well.
Mobile app developer community embraced Flutter so quick that there are a wealth of open-source packages for it in a very short time.
Just like libraries, packages reduce the development time frame as developers don’t need to perform development from scratch for trivial functionalities. Things like HTTP calls, image caching etc become easier if we’re using the right packages.
We have curated a list of top 10 Flutter libraries that provide tremendous support in Flutter app development. After conducting proper research, we have picked out the most useful Flutter packages for your reference.
Every Flutter developer must know about these listed packages:
- FL Charts
This Flutter package supports line charts, pie charts, bar charts, etc. It also provides enough parameters to customize the look & feel of the graphs. It’s an amazing package if you’re looking to develop data-intensive apps with features like analytics, filtering etc.
- GetIt
It’s one of the most important packages which should be used to architect your app better. It basically implements the service locator pattern for you and makes dependency injection a breeze. It’s used by many know apps that are built with Flutter. Even we, at CitrusLeaf, use this package in almost all of our Flutter apps.
- URL Launcher
This Flutter package is used to launch URLs in mobile apps. It supports both Android & iOS platforms. It’s most useful when you want the OS to handle the URL for you. It supports multiple URL schemes like HTTP, mailto, SMS etc.
- Package Info
Package info plugin is used to fetch the information about the application’s version and other related things. This package is particularly useful if want to check the app’s version at runtime and perform some tasks accordingly.
- Path Provider
This plugin helps in finding commonly used locations on the filesystem. It supports both Android & iOS. It can be used to get the database path when using SQFlite library. It supports both internal and external storage and provides seamless methods to get the desired directories like documents, private etc. It should be used along with permissions handler package to check for permissions before accessing the filesystem.
- Local Auth
Local auth plugin package provides ways to perform local and on-device authentication. These authentication methods refer to biometric authentication i.e Touch ID APIs for iOS and fingerprint APIs for Android. This package is most useful to secure the app and its data. It has support for two types of biometric authentication:
- Face biometric authentication
- Fingerprint biometric authentication
- RxDart
The Reactive Manifesto has made it easier to build reactive apps. RxDart is a package that brings reactive capabilities to your Flutter apps. Since Dart already supports Streams and Flutter is any reactive in nature thanks to setState(), RxDart is very easy to start with and provides many classes to speed up app development.
- Intro Slider
To build an interactive and impactful introduction of a Flutter app, you should use Intro Slider Plugin. It allows Flutter developers to build an appealing introductory section using many animations and patterns. With an extensive list of parameters, you can easily customize the look & feel of the slider.
- Cached Network Image
Caching has always been a hard problem in Computer Science. More so with image caching, that too on mobile devices with limited memory. However, thanks to this plugin, you can easily cache images without much effort. It comes with sane-defaults along with may customization options so that you can start using it right away. Highly recommended for building eCommerce and similar apps.
- SQFLite
Flutter does not provide a built-in abstraction for accessing the SQLite Database. However, using the SQFlite plugin, one can access the SQLite database on both Android & iOS. The plugin is well-maintained and is recommended by the Flutter team as well.
Also Read: SQFLite Flutter Tutorial
The above list is definitely not complete, but we believe that these are the packages that you must use while building your app, just like we do. Moreover, with the way Flutter is rising, we’re going to get many more quality packages from the community and Google in 2020.
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