This week I publish (for internal tester only) my first app in Flutter. Let’s start a new story.
The project 📽
I wanted to start with a very tiny scope and go from coding to publishing before enhance the numbers of options of the app. Using the pattern of tracer bullet to raise the main issue as soon as possible.
Then as I have an open bet with one of my children (Pierre, I name him because you’ll see it have an influence on this app) and I need to count how many time an even occur, I decide to create a simple counter.
First version really just count. It is not persistent, you can’t erase it or name it : it is the simplest scope I can do.
Why Flutter 🍃 ?
Because I didn’t want to take care of the platform it will be available (Android or Apple) and furthermore, it won’t be an advanced app that will need optimization, it won’t interact a lot with other feature of the the device, at least for the next month 📆.
Compare to Kotlin and React Native, Flutter seems to me more simpler and less limited but I admit that it is only an impression and I didn’t dig in a deep comparison between each solutions.
First impression
I started with the Get started guide of Flutter and I used VSCode IDE with flutter extension and as I expected it was very simple.
Coding in Dart is not difficult to understand if you are familiar with oriented object programming and component pattern with context scope management.
The only thing I didn’t totally get, it is how use the documentation and get all methods and parameters of a component, also I don’t get yet how find easily the available component in Flutter community. I still have to document my self about the ecosystem and the community, perhaps it will be the subject of an other post.
Publishing in Console Play Store
To be able to publish your first app in Play store, you’ll have to follow a lot of steps but you are well accompanied. First you’ll have to pay 25 $ to to get a developer account, then you’ll have to justify your identity it will take average 2 days.
Then let’s start, follow all the steps display on the google play console. There is many steps but all is explained. For the first app publication I waited about 5 days to be published but for the first update I made it was almost real time : note that I didn’t have to update permissions of the app.
For Apple the entry ticket price is 100 $ but I don’t have any iPhone then I didn’t go forward yet.
Conclusion
In few days, I published a first app in the play store and I was able to install it on my device. Very cool to achieve such goal start from zero in very short time.