Flutter App Development using PubNub Plugin
Flutter app Development offers a portable UI kit from Google that enables programmers to create native web and mobile applications from a single codebase. It is the main language for developing apps on Google Fuchsia and is used to create apps for iOS and Android.
It takes a little “hacking” to access native features like the camera, Bluetooth, or third-party functionality when using cross-platform development languages like Flutter and React-Native. We can use the plugins for native features, but for third-party systems, we must create our package.
Methods For Producing Flutter Packages
There are two ways to make Flutter packages. The third party’s methods must be taken into consideration when selecting a strategy.
Dart Packages
These are written in the Dart programming language and contain Flutter-specific functionality, so they are completely dependent on the Flutter app Development framework.
Plugin Packages
These packages combine the Dart API with a platform-specific implementation written in Java, Kotlin, Objective-C, or Swift for Android and iOS.
Writing plugin packages are simple, and Flutter provides a sample for referencing a platform’s version. Flutter can complete nearly all of the tasks that native apps can thank Platform Channels and Message Passing.
The procedure entails waiting for the results to be returned to Dart after Flutter instructs native iOS or Android code to complete a task. The directory structure of a Flutter app developmment includes directories for Android and iOS in addition to the lib directory, which houses Dart code.
These include the native iOS and Android projects running the compiled Dart code. We can establish communication between the native Android/iOS code and Dart-based Flutter by using the MethodChannel. We can also find the example Flutter code in this folder, which we can use to test our Flutter app Development plugin in an app.
Launching And Establishing A Flutter Plugin
Set the name and package of the plugin you want to create by choosing Start a Flutter project > Flutter Plugin. You can create an example plugin using Android Studio. The platform’s version is retrieved by this plugin, which then displays it in the user interface. Let’s proceed carefully and examine what each file does.
We must first create a MethodChannel variable before we can interact with the native code. The MethodChannel must have the same name as the native Android/iOS code, which is located in representative folders (for instance, on Android, this will be android->src->main->your package name->flutter plugin). This ensures that the MethodChannel is initialized correctly.
The invokeMethod of the MethodChannel is called by the async method getPlatformVersion. This method call will trigger the onMethodCall event in the native code. In the onMethodCall function, we must handle the “getPlatformVersion” method by implementing its functionality and returning its result. Remember that the get platformVersion function’s return value from the flutter plugin.dart file must match the value of the result variable.
We only include conventional types of variables in the output. success, we could also return custom variables, but to parse them, we would need to implement them in native (Android or iOS) and Flutter (Dart) code.
We can use this functionality on the example app after linking the native code and Flutter app Development together.
PubNub Plugin: What is it?
A real-time message distribution framework called PubNub supports a huge number of languages (Java, Javascript, PHP, Python, Swift, Ruby, and many others). Although they support a large number of languages, Flutter is not currently supported. That functionality must be implemented, either by creating a Dart SDK or using the Android/iOS SDK as a Flutter plugin. We decided to make a Flutter app Development Plugin due to time restrictions and the fact that the SDKs are very stable and dependable.
To create engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect, apps use PubNub’s developer API platform.
What function does PubNub Plugin perform?
PubNub is a provider of real-time infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and a real-time communication platform with headquarters in San Francisco, California. The business manufactures products that hardware and software developers use to build real-time web, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
How To Create Your Own Flutter Pubnub Plugin
We must first create an example plugin that Android Studio produces with the name PubNubPlugin (we can then remove the unwanted functionality). To initialize the PubNub channel, we will also need to publish, subscribe, and use a secret key. Through a free account on the PubNub website, we can do that. We can then create an app in the PubNub dashboard.
Import PubNub SDK
Importing the PubNub SDK for Android projects is the first step (at this point we need to say that during this week, we were focused mainly on the Android platform, but we will implement the iOS plugin, too). The build.gradle file in the Android folder is where you can import the SDK, just as you would if the app were native.
Now that we have PubNubPlugin.java, we can implement all of the Android PubNub functionality.
We will require four tasks:
- Establish a PubNub channel.
- Become a channel subscriber
- Unsubscriber from a channel
- To the channel, send a message
Integrating Native Code With Flutter
We have so far implemented native Android functions; the next step is to connect them to Flutter code. We’ll use PubnubPlugin.java’s onMethodCall function to accomplish that. Additionally, we will need to create EventChannel objects to carry those messages since we will need to send messages and the PubNub status to the Flutter app development.
Why are we not using the result, some of you may be asking? success in returning the outcome to the Flutter application? The outcome is the reason. Although success can only be called once, we will retrieve numerous messages. We must use the MethodChannel to invoke PubnubPlugin.java’s methods in PubNub plugin.dart.
Putting Your Pubnub Plugin Online
We could publish the plugin to PubDev Dart Packages and use it as a plugin on pubspec.yaml rather than using it locally. To publish a plugin, use the following commands:
- flutter packages pub publish–dry-run
- flutter packages pub publish
Conclusion
By using plugins, you can guarantee that your app will be usable in production. Without them, mobile app developers would have to implement the same API in native Dart code, which would take a lot of time and resources.
Anyone with cross-platform development experience can create a Flutter Development plugin because other frameworks like React-Native and PhoneGap have similar frameworks for writing plugins.