Building Your User Interface through Widgets

In this chapter, we will move beyond the world of pure Dart and into Flutter. One of the key aspects of Flutter is a special type of class called a widget. We will explore what a widget is and the three different types of widgets: stateless, stateful, and inherited. We will explore some of the most common widgets in Flutter, view them in action, and learn how to add them to the Hello World! application you created in Chapter 1, What Is Flutter and Why Should I Use It? Additionally, you will gain an understanding of how layout widgets can help you structure your user interface (UI).

Widgets are classes and objects within the Dart language. Therefore, this chapter will use a lot of the knowledge that you gained in Chapter 4, Dart Classes and Constructs, regarding Dart classes and enums. Armed with this knowledge, we will explore stateful and stateless widgets, which are classes that inherit from specific superclasses and are key to how...