flutter_server_driven_ui 0.1.0

Flutter server driven ui make it easy to implement Server Driven UI pattern on flutter.

SDUI

SDUI make it easy to implement Server Driven UI pattern on flutter.

• The server decides what to render by describing in a JSON the widgets to render.
• The Flutter screen parse the JSON and build the widgets

Kind like HTML... but not really.

Example

The Server

Here is an example of JSON returned by the URL POST http://myapp.herokuapp.com/screens/profile:

{
    "type": "Screen",
    "appBar": {
        "type": "AppBar",
        "attributes": {
            "title": "Profile"
        }
    },
    "child": {
        "type": "Form",
        "attributes": {
            "padding": 10
        },
        "children": [
            {
                "type": "Input",
                "attributes": {
                    "name": "first_name",
                    "value": "Ray",
                    "caption": "First Name",
                    "maxLength": 30
                }
            },
            {
                "type": "Input",
                "attributes": {
                    "name": "last_name",
                    "value": "Sponsible",
                    "caption": "Last Name",
                    "maxLength": 30
                }
            },
            {
                "type": "Input",
                "attributes": {
                    "name": "email",
                    "value": "[e-mail]",
                    "caption": "Email *",
                    "required": true
                }
            },
            {
                "type": "Input",
                "attributes": {
                    "type": "date",
                    "name": "birth_date",
                    "caption": "Date of Birth"
                }
            },
            {
                "type": "Input",
                "attributes": {
                    "type": "Submit",
                    "name": "submit",
                    "caption": "Create Profile"
                },
                "action": {
                    "type": "Command",
                    "url": "https://myapp.herokuapp.com/commands/save-profile",
                    "prompt": {
                        "type": "Dialog",
                        "attributes": {
                            "type": "confirm",
                            "title": "Confirmation",
                            "message": "Are you sure you want to change your profile?"
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

The UI in Flutter

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:sdui/sdui.dart';

void main() async {
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(title: 'Demo', initialRoute: '/', routes: _routes());
  }

  Map<String, WidgetBuilder> _routes() =>
      {
        '/': (context) =>
        const DynamicRoute(
            provider: HttpRouteContentProvider(
                'http://www.myapp.com/screens/profile'))
      };
}

Screenshots

Screen	Date Picker	Alert Dialog

Widgets

In Flutter, UI is composed of a hierarchy of Widgets. A widget is a visual element on a screen.

SDUI described widgets with the following json structure:

{
    "type": "...",
    "attributes": {
      "padding": 12,
      "color": "#ff0000",
      ...
    },
    "children": [
      ...
    ]
}

• type: indicates the type of widget
• attributes: key/value pair of the attributes of the widget. Ex: caption, color, padding, spacing etc.
• children: The list of children widgets

Widget Library

• Navigation widgets
  • Dialog
  • AppBar
  • Page
  • PageView
  • Screen
• Layout widgets
  • Center
  • Column
  • Container
  • Expanded
  • FittedBox
  • Flexible
  • GridView
  • Positioned
  • Row
  • Stack
  • SingleChildScrollView
  • Spacer
• Images/Icons
  • CarouselSlider
  • CircleAvatar
  • Icon
  • IconButton
  • Image
  • PhotoView
• Input widgets
  • Button
  • Camera
  • DropdownButton
  • DropdownMenuItem
  • Form
  • IconButton
  • Input
  • ListView
  • ListItem
  • ListItemSwitch
  • MoneyText
  • MoneyWithKeyboard
  • MoneyWithSlider
  • PinWidthKeyboard
  • QrImage
  • QrView
  • Radio
  • RadioGroup
  • SearchableDropdown
  • Text
• Other
  • Badge
  • Chip
  • ExpandablePanel
  • Html

Global Variables

• sduiErrorState: Function for building the error state.
• sduiLoadingState: Function for building the loading state.
• sduiProgressIndicator: Function for building the progress indicator.
• sduiRouteObserver: Route observer that reload each page on navigation.
• sduiAnalytics: Analytics class. See SDUIAnalytics
• sduiCameras: List of available cameras. Empty by default, must be initialized the application

Actions

With actions, you can:

• Execute a command on a server (Ex: Saver User Profile, Delete User Account etc.)
• Navigate to another screen.
• Prompt a message to user.

SDUI described actions with the following json structure:

{
    "type": "...",
    "attributes": {
      ...
    },
    ...
    "action": {
      "type": "...",
      "url": "...",
      "prompt": {
        "type": "...",
        "title": "Confirmation",
        "message": "Are you sure you want to change your profile?"
      }
    }

}

• type: Defines the type of action:
  • Route: To redirect to another route
  • Page: To redirect to another page, in the context of [PageView]
  • Command: Remote action to execute. The screen is associated with a URL that will execute the command, and redirect the user to the next screen
  • Share: Share a message to user via email/messenger/whatsapp etc.
  • Navigate: Navigate user to a web page
• url: is the URL associated with the action
  • route:/..: redirect users to previous route
  • route:/~: redirect users to 1st route
  • URL starting with route:/<ROUTE_NAME> redirect user the a named route. (Ex: route:/checkout)
  • URL starting with http:// or https redirect user to a server driven page
  • page:/<PAGE_NUMBER>: redirect users to a given page. <PAGE_NUMBER> is the page index (starting with 0).
• replacement: For type=Route, this indicate if we replace the current view or navigate.
• parameters: Parameters to add to the URL where to redirect to
• message: Message to share
• prompt: Shows a Dialog before execute the action
  • type: The type of prompt (Exemple: Confirm, Error, Warning, Information)
  • title: Title of the alert box to open
  • message: Message to display to the user

Build your own Widget

You can integrate your own widget into sdui.

Step 1: Create your instance of SDUIWidget

This is an example of widget that render a text with a margin and padding. The widget has the following attributes

• text: The text to display
• padding: The padding value
• margin: The margin value

    class MyWidget extends SDUIWidget {
  String text = '';
  double padding = 10.0;
  double margin = 10.0;

  /// This method will be called by [SDUIParser] to read the widget attributes from the JSON data
  @override
  SDUIWidget fromJson(Map<String, dynamic>? json) {
    text = json?['caption'] ?? '';
    margin = json?['margin'] ?? 10.0;
    padding = json?['padding'] ?? 10.0;
    return this;
  }

  /// This method will be called when rendering the page to create the Flutter widget
  @override
  Widget toWidget(BuildContext context) =>
      Container(
        padding: EdgeInsets.all(padding),
        margin: EdgeInsets.all(margin),
        child: Text(
          text,
          style:
          const TextStyle(fontWeight: FontWeight.bold, color: Colors.red),
        ),
      );
}

Step 2: Register the widget

The Widget is registered into SDUI and associated with the type MyWidget

void main() async {
  // Register 3rd party widget
  SDUIWidgetRegistry.getInstance().register('MyWidget', () => MyWidget());

  runApp(constMyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  // ...
}

Step 3: Add the widget into the JSONs

Here is an example of JSON with our 3rd party widget

{
    "type": "Screen",
    "appBar": {
        "type": "AppBar",
        "attributes": {
            "title": "Home"
        }
    },
    "child": {
        "type": "Center",
        "children": [
            {
                "type": "MyWidget",
                "attributes": {
                    "caption": "3rd Party Widget",
                    "padding": 5.0,
                    "margin": 5.0
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}