What is Flutter?

Flutter is a popular cross-platform framework for building mobile applications. With Flutter, developers can create high-performance mobile applications for both iOS and Android platforms using a single codebase. However, building a mobile application requires more than just front-end development. Developers must also create a robust backend to store and manage data. Appwrite is an open-source backend as a service (BaaS) platform that can be used to build the backend for a mobile application. In this blog post, we will explore the integration of Flutter with Appwrite to create high-performance mobile applications.

What is Appwrite?

Appwrite is a self-hosted open-source BaaS platform that provides developers with a set of easy-to-use APIs to build the backend of their applications. It provides a complete suite of backend tools that include authentication, database, storage, and functions. Appwrite also provides SDKs for a variety of programming languages, including Dart, the programming language used in Flutter.

Appwrite was designed with security in mind. It uses the latest security standards and provides features such as two-factor authentication, rate limiting, and IP blocking to keep your application secure. Appwrite is also highly scalable and can handle millions of requests per second.

Integration of Flutter with Appwrite

Integrating Flutter with Appwrite is straightforward. Appwrite provides an SDK for Dart, which allows developers to access the Appwrite APIs from their Flutter application. This SDK provides a set of easy-to-use APIs that abstract the details of the RESTful API endpoints.

To integrate Flutter with Appwrite, follow these steps:

Step#1: Create an Appwrite Account
To use Appwrite, you will need to create an account. You can sign up for a free account at appwrite.io. Once you have created an account, you can create a new project and configure the backend services that you need.

Step#2: Install the Appwrite SDK for Dart
To use the Appwrite SDK for Dart, you will need to add it as a dependency in your Flutter application. You can do this by adding the following line to your pubspec.yaml file:

yaml

dependencies:
  appwrite: ^8.2.0

After adding the dependency, run flutter pub get to install the SDK.

Step#3: Initialize the Appwrite Client
To use the Appwrite SDK, you will need to initialize the Appwrite client in your Flutter application. You can do this by creating an instance of the Client class and passing in your project ID and endpoint URL:

dart

import 'package:appwrite/appwrite.dart';

Client client = Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://localhost/v1') // Your Appwrite Endpoint
    .setProject('5e8cf4f46b5e8')         // Your project ID
    .setSelfSigned(status: true);        // For self signed certificates, only use for development

Before sending any API calls to your new Appwrite project, make sure your mobile device or emulator has network access to your Appwrite project's hostname or IP address.

When connecting to a local self-hosted Appwrite project from an emulator or a mobile device, you should use the private IP of the device running your Appwrite project as the hostname of the endpoint instead of localhost. You can also use a service like ngrok to proxy the Appwrite server.

Step#4: Make Your First Request

After your SDK configuration is set, access any of the Appwrite services and choose any request to send. Full documentation for any service method you would like to use can be found in your SDK documentation or the API References section.

// Register User
Account account = Account(client);

final user = await account.create(
    userId: ID.unique(),
    email: 'me@appwrite.io',
    password: 'password',
    name: 'My Name'
);

Step#4: Listening To The Changes
If you want to listen to changes in real-time from Appwrite, you can subscribe to a variety of channels and receive updates within milliseconds.

// Subscribe to files channel
final realtime = Realtime(client);
final subscription = realtime.subscribe(['files']);

subscription.stream.listen((response) {
    if (response.events.contains('buckets.*.files.*.create') {
        // Log when a new file is uploaded
        print(response.payload);
    }
});

I will be creating a few more articles around AppWrite features like Auth, Storage and many more.