Part 3 in a series about Server Side Dart without a framework

If you haven’t read the first two parts of this series, you may want to start with them because they’ll provide a lot of background information that I won’t reexplain today:

1. Building a Dart server from scratch
2. Routing HTTP requests in a Dart server

If you’re comfortable with those topics, though, there’s no need to refer to them. This article will contain all the code you need to follow along.

Note: I’m using the pre-null safe version of Dart (2.10.4) to write this article, but I plan to update the instructions when null safety enters stable. …

Part 2 in a series about Server Side Dart without a framework

This article is a continuation in exploring Dart as an HTTP server backend, but without any frameworks or third-party packages. Knowing how to build a Dart server from scratch will not only make you a better developer in general, but will also keep you from being left in the lurch when your favorite framework falls off a cliff.

Go back and read Part 1: Building a Dart server from scratch if you haven’t already. …

The Uri class in Dart has good documentation, but sometimes seeing examples makes it a lot easier to understand. This article will show examples for all of the main parameters to make them more clear.

Creating a Uri

You can create a Uri by parsing string like this:

Uri uri = Uri.parse('http://www.example.com');

The following examples will all reference uri but I’ll omit the line above to save space. Every example will start with the URL string to be parsed.

Properties of Uri

scheme

The scheme is something like http, https, or file. There are a lot more.

http://www.example.comString scheme = uri.scheme;
print(scheme); // http

authority

The authority in a URL is normally just the main website without the scheme or path or anything. …

If you can understand the bytes, you can understand anything.

Preface

I started on this topic because I was researching how to communicate between Dart and a PostgreSQL database server. It turned out to be much more low-level than I had been expecting. I thought I’d write a short article explaining some of new things I was learning. Well, three full days of writing later, that short article has turned into one of the most in-depth explanations I’ve ever written on an already niche topic. Although the article is long, I don’t think you’ll find it boring, and there’s a good chance you learn one or two new things about Dart even if you’ve been using it for a while. I certainly did. As always, please let me know if you find any errors. That’s how I learn. And try the code examples out yourself. …

A full demo to get you started

This article will show you how to create a custom keyboard widget used to enter text in a Flutter TextField within your own app. Use cases include text input for special characters or languages where a system keyboard may not exist or users may not have the correct keyboard installed. For example, I’ve used this method with the mongol package to create a basic keyboard to enter traditional Mongolian text:

A guide to building your own custom RenderObject

The normal way to create widgets in Flutter is through composition, which means combining several basic widgets into a more complex one. That’s not what this article is about, but if your not familiar with the concept, you can read more about it in Creating Reusable Custom Widgets in Flutter.

When the existing Flutter widgets can’t be combined in a way to match what you need, you can use a CustomPaint widget to draw exactly what you want. …

Part 1 in a series about Server Side Dart without a framework

I really like being able to use the same language to write server code as when I write Flutter apps. Two of the main frameworks to do that have been Aqueduct and Angel. Unfortunately, Angel is being deprecated and Aqueduct hasn’t published a stable version for some time (as of December 2020).

Since the A’s are out, it’s time for plan B.

While frameworks are nice, there’s always a bit of magic about them. The dart:io library, which is one of the core Dart libraries, already includes the low-level classes and functions needed to make an HTTP server. …

A quick reference for your second migration

If you’ve already followed the migration guides in one of these places:

• Announcing Dart null safety beta blog post
• Migrating to null safety documentation

Then you know what to do. This article is a quick summary for migrating your second package or project so that you don’t have to sift through all the details in the documentation again.

Switch to the beta channel

flutter channel beta
flutter upgrade

Check dependency status

dart pub outdated --mode=null-safety

Replace any dependencies in pubspec.yaml with the null safety version.

dart pub upgrade

Note: I had an old package that didn’t use pedantic. This made Dart complain about null safety issues too early. You can add it to pubspec.yaml …