Flutter Plugins – Get Great Functionality for Free!

Flutter is lucky to have an amazing community of developers who share code with each other via plugins. It is this kind of open source approach that allows frameworks such as Flutter to thrive and allows for innovation across the platform. It also means you generally don’t need to reinvent the wheel, allowing you to focus on the unique aspects of your app, rather than spending a lot of time working on basic functionality.

This chapter will start by explaining what plugins are and how you can add them to your app. There is a wide range of plugins available, from user interface widget libraries to low-level messaging tooling and music management classes, so the setup is somewhat bespoke for each plugin. However, there are general rules to follow and best practices for managing versions.

Finally, we will look at some common challenges with plugins and how to resolve them. After the deep technical learnings of the...