all_box_devtool

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💡 A DevTools extension for all_box: browse and edit AllBox containers straight from Flutter/Dart DevTools.

Table of contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Step-by-step setup
• Usage
• How it works
• Additional information

🚀 Features

• 🔍 Containers list. Every AllBox container currently alive in the inspected app, filterable by name, with backend/pending-flush badges.
• 📄 Container detail. A selected container's keys and values, filterable by key name, plus a storage summary (backend, key count, approximate size).
• ✏️ Edit in place. Tap a key to view it, edit it as raw JSON, or delete it — writes go straight to the running app through the VM Service.
• 🔁 Polling refresh. The panel refreshes automatically every 2 seconds, plus a manual refresh button. all_box 0.6.0 does post debug-only VM Service mutation events on write/remove/erase, but this extension doesn't consume them yet (see How it works) — refreshing is pull-based for now.
• 🧯 Debug/profile only. all_box's introspection (AllBoxInspector) is a no-op in release builds — nothing here adds runtime overhead to a shipped app, and there's nothing to see in a release build's DevTools session, by design.

📋 Requirements

The app you're debugging must depend on:

dependencies:
  all_box: ^0.6.0

all_box 0.6.0 is what introduced AllBoxInspector — the debug-only, read-only introspection surface this extension reads through the VM Service. Nothing else is required on the inspected app's side.

📦 Step-by-step setup

1. In the app that uses all_box, make sure pubspec.yaml has all_box in dependencies and all_box_devtool in dev_dependencies:

   dependencies:
     all_box: ^0.6.0
   
   dev_dependencies:
     all_box_devtool: ^1.0.0
   

2. Run:

   flutter pub get
   

3. Start the app in debug or profile mode:

   flutter run
   

4. Open Flutter/Dart DevTools from your IDE or from the URL printed in the terminal.

5. On first use, enable the all_box_devtool extension when DevTools asks for permission.

6. Open the "all_box_devtool" tab.

7. Select a container to inspect its keys, edit values as raw JSON, or remove entries.

For more details about extension permissions, see the official docs: Use a DevTools extension.

🧪 Usage

Once enabled, a new "all_box_devtool" tab appears in DevTools while your app is running.

• Select a container on the left to inspect its keys on the right.
• Type in either search field to filter containers or keys.
• Tap any key to view, edit (as raw JSON), or delete it.
• Use the refresh button, or just wait — the panel polls every 2 seconds on its own.

🛠️ How it works

• The extension talks to the inspected app only through the VM Service — it evaluates AllBoxInspector.snapshotAsJson() (and, for writes, AllBox(container).write(...)/.remove(...)) in the app's main isolate. No package is added to the inspected app's own dependency graph beyond all_box itself.
• all_box has no built-in Dart-visible reactivity by design (see its own README). As of all_box 0.6.0 it also posts a debug-only VM Service extension event (all_box:mutation) after every write/remove/erase, aimed exactly at tooling like this — but this extension doesn't listen for it yet, so it stays pull-based for now: a PollingController refreshes every 2 seconds, and every write/delete triggers an immediate extra refresh so the UI reflects your own edits right away.
• Full design rationale, folder-by-folder responsibilities, and the reasoning behind each decision: ARCHITECTURE.md.

📚 Additional information

• Architecture and design notes: ARCHITECTURE.md.
• all_box: github.com/CriandoGames/all_box.
• Issues: github.com/CriandoGames/all_box_devtool/issues.

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Issues and pull requests are welcome at the GitHub repository.