notepod

Exercise 4: Getting started - PODs app development with Flutter

Table of Contents

Exercise 4: Getting started - PODs app development with Flutter

This exercise provides resources to install Flutter and get started developing PODs based apps with Flutter.

You will have the opportunity to build and run the Notepod app on your local machine, and add small features to the Notepod app.

You do not need to run a Solid server, as the Notepod app uses the Community Solid Server open source software running on the Solid Community AU server https://pods.solidcommunity.au

Install Flutter

To get setup, you will first need to install Flutter. Installing Flutter for app development is a lengthy process. You will need to install the following:

Flutter SDK

Follow the Flutter Dev instructions to install flutter for your preferred platform at Flutter Dev Getting Started
Flutter can be installed on Windows, MacOS, Linux, and ChromeOS
With Flutter SDK installation Dart SDK will also get automatically installed
After installing FLutter SDK you will also need to add the <path to Flutter bin> to your environment variables

IDE

VS Code is the recommended IDE for flutter development
Go to the VS Code Download section and download and install VS Code to your respective platform
After installing, run VS Code and go to extensions. Search for Flutter and install the first extension in the search results
Installing this extension will also automatically install Dart extension for VS Code

Android Studio (Optional)

Android app development only

Go to Android studio web page and download the installation file
Install and run Android studio
Complete the initial setup which will also install a few other required items
After setup, in the first welcome screen you will see More Actions link. Click on it and select SDK Manager
In the opened Settings window select the SDK Tools tab
In the long list of tools select the one that says Android SDK Command-line Tools (latest) and click Apply. This will install the command line tools for Android
Before you can use Flutter, you must agree to the licenses of the Android SDK platform. FOr that do the following
Open a command line and enter the following line and press enter flutter doctor --android-licenses

Visual Studio (Optional)

Windows app development only

You will also need to install Visual Studio if you are developing Windows apps
Install Visual Studio 2022 or Visual Studio Build Tools 2022
When installing Visual Studio or only the Build Tools, you need the Desktop development with C++ workload installed for building windows, including all of its default components.

MacOS development (Optional)

MacOS app development only

After installing the flutter SDK for MacOS, you will need to follow the additional Extra Setup for MacOS to configure Xcode for PODs based app development.
If you experiment errors building for macos with flutter run -d macos, it is likely a mismatch between your macOS version, Xcode version, and flutter version. MacOS Sonoma and more recent versions of MacOS Venturer require Xcode version >= v15.0.1, and flutter version >= 3.18. To develop flutter apps with macOS, we recommend updating to MacOS Sonoma, Xcode >= 15.0.1, and using flutter channel beta (flutter channel stable is awaiting updates for Xcode 15.0.1).

iOS development (Optional)

After installing the flutter SDK for MacOS including the iOS steps, you will need to follow the additional Extra Setup for iOS to configure Xcode for PODs based app development.

Flutter doctor

After the above setup, you should now have all the required software and tools installed for Flutter development.

Open a command line and enter the following command to check your setup.

flutter doctor

This will then perform checks on all the installed components and will give you an output like the following.

[√] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.16.2, on Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.2715], locale en-US)
[√] Windows Version (Installed version of Windows is version 10 or higher)
[√] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 31.0.0)
[√] Chrome - develop for the web
[√] Visual Studio - develop Windows apps (Visual Studio Community 2022 17.2.3)
[√] Android Studio (version 4.2)
[√] VS Code (version 1.84.2)
[√] Connected device (3 available)
[√] Network resources

If you have any errors in any of the above components, follow the given instructions to fix those issues.

You can also run flutter --version to check the installed version of the Flutter and flutter devices to list the configured devices for running apps.

You are now ready to develop apps with Flutter.

Test run Flutter

You can also check your flutter install by running the flutter demo app on your preferred device - see Test drive flutter

Get Notepod code

Now lets get the Notepod project setup in your flutter development environment.

Go to Notepod repo. You can either Clone the repo by

git clone https://github.com/anusii/notepod.git

or you can fork it to your own GitHub account.

Now open your VS Code IDE. Go to File -> Open Folder and select the local notepod directory.

You are now ready to make changes to the Notepod app with Flutter.

Make changes to the Notepod app

There are a couple of options you can use to run the Notepod app.

Option 1 Open the Terminal in the VS Code (if not open by default at the bottom of the window) by going to Terminal -> New Terminal in the top menu bar.

Go to the notepod directory and run the following command.

flutter run -d [your_device]

Add the name of the device you want the app to run on. For instance, if you want to run the app as a Windows app use the command

flutter run -d Windows

When running for the first time it will ask to setup Windows device for the app. Simply follow the steps to set that up.

Option 2

In the VS Code Explorer bar open the file notepod -> lib -> main.dart. A play button will apear on the top right had coner of your window. Click that button and select either one of the options and the app will then run.

For the first time it will again ask for you to setup the preferred device for the app to run on.

Editing Notepod app

Open the Notepod repo in your favourite editor. You can use any editor you like.

Edit some text in the app, by searching and changing that text in your editor. Press R to hot restart the app to see your changes.

Tackle a Notepod issue

Now you can have a go at contributing to an issue in the Notepod repo.

Pick an issue, create a branch, make your changes, and submit a pull request - we’re excited to see your contributions!

Feel free to also log an issue, providing details of your platform and how to replicate the problem.

Congratulations, you are now part of the Solid Community!!

More resources

There are a wealth of resources online.

Solid:

Solid server (Togaware)
- Links to Solid Resources (Togaware)
Resources for Solid developers (Solidproject.org)
Solid forum (Solidproject.org)
solid-auth package: Implementation of Solid-OIDC flow which can be used to authenticate a client application to a Solid POD. Solid OIDC is built on top of OpenID Connect 1.0.
solid-encrypt package: Implementation of data encryption which can be used to encrypt the content in turtle files stored in a Solid POD.
rdflib package: A dart package for working with RDF. Features include find and create triple instances, create a graph to store triples, export graph to ttl, etc.

Flutter:

Working with Git:

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