If you’d like to distribute your Flutter app to iOS-using testers via Firebase Distribution, you’ll need to build IPA files. IPA files are simply iOS Application files that behave like APK or app bundles on Android. Unlike APK or app bundles however, you can’t just run a flutter build command and create an IPA. Build App Bundle: flutter build appbundle Build APK: flutter build apk This article will show you the fastest way to build an IPA for your Flutter app....
Google’s Cloud Firestore is a tool that should be in every mobile app developer’s tool belt. The flexible and scalable database that it provides is unlike anything a coder could create alone and if your app is designed for a global audience, there aren’t many solutions like it. Plus, there’s a Flutter package ( cloud_firestore) that’s designed to make Flutter and Flame play nicely together. Unfortunately, there is one downside. The tool isn’t free to use and every read/write transaction your app makes with the Firestore database is counted against your daily quota (50,000 daily reads and 20,000 daily writes for the free tier plan)....
Inspired by this Stack Overflow post For an app that deals heavily with uploading and downloading images from a server, file size can make or break the user experience. Large files will take longer to save, display, and manipulate, all of which will affect the app’s network performance. Depending on how image-heavy the application is, users may spend more time staring at loading screens than actually interacting with content....
The Legend of the Multi-Colored TabBar A majority of popular mobile apps on the app store use a tried and true navigation scheme: the Bottom Navigation Bar. The idea is to have all 4 or 5 of the app’s main activities visible and within thumb’s reach. If you do a quick browse through the apps on your phone, you’ll find this pattern is far and away the most used. Bottom Navigation Bar Apps:...
Firebase is awesome and I’ve used it in more apps than I can count (assuming I can only count to about 20). It has authentication, data storage, an intuitive querying SDK, and plenty of other features that most mobile app developers find themselves wanting at one point or another. So why replace it? I asked myself the same question many times and more than once my answer was “Don’t”. It had just about everything I needed…and then I was asked to implement End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) in a social media app....
I’ve used Google’s Firebase/Firestore database solution for nearly 6 months and had come to believe that it was an unstoppable force. If you’re only dealing with numbers, strings, and other simple data forms, this is true. The NoSQL database gives you immense control over how you store information a provides querying tools that can be used to find items meeting very specific criteria in a snap. But if you’re interested in storing and retrieving larger files like images and audio clips, Firestore is not the solution you need....