app_widget #

flutter app widget

Getting Started #

Platform support #

• ✅ Android
• ❌ iOS

Android #

Since flutter engine are build on android activity, we cannot directly build the the widget interface using flutter. Hence it need to be build using XML the android way.

This plugin introduce some api from the android native and provide some suggestion on how to include an app widget with you flutter application.

App widget is a like a mini app and are actually separated from your main app. It have limited capability on it's own and can't actually talk to the main app directly after the first configuration.

This mean after the first config, there is no way we can talk directly to the widget. There are two way we can update the widget:

1. Using sharedPreferences and AppWidgetProvider
2. Using workmanager scheduled task

Using this package #

Platform setup #

Android

1. Add widget layout

2. Add appwidget-provider info android/app/src/main/res/xml/my-widget-provider-info

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appwidget-provider xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:minWidth="80dp"
    android:minHeight="80dp"
    android:targetCellWidth="3"
    android:targetCellHeight="2"
    android:updatePeriodMillis="86400000"
    android:initialLayout="@layout/example_layout"
    android:configure="tech.noxasch.app_widget_example.MainActivity"
    android:widgetCategory="home_screen"
    android:widgetFeatures="reconfigurable">
</appwidget-provider>
 <!--
   android:configure - named it to your app MainActivity
   android:initialLayout - should point to an actual layout for the widget
   refer to https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/appwidgets/overview
 -->

3. Update Android manifest android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest

• add intent-filter to the MainActivity activity block if you want to support widget initial configuration

  <activity
    android:name=".MainActivity"
    ...>
      ...
      <!-- add this -->
      <intent-filter>
          <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_CONFIGURE"/>
      </intent-filter>
  </activity>

• add appwidget provider for widget update and deleted intent

<receiver android:exported="true" android:name="MyWidgetProvider">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE"/>
        <action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_DELETED"/>
    </intent-filter>
    <meta-data android:name="android.appwidget.provider"
        android:resource="@xml/app_widget_example_info" />
</receiver>

3. Create the widget provider Inherit from Android AppWidgetProvider and implement the required method if needed. Since the plugin already provice interface to update widget, we can leave the onUpdate method and handle it on dart side.

   Probably you want to implement onDeleted method to handle cleanup like removing the widget Id from sharePrefences allow user to add multiple widget.

4. Using workmanager update widget

In App Usage #

// instantiate appWidgetPlugin
final appWidgetPlugin = AppWidgetPlugin();
appWidgetPlugin.configureWidget(...)
appWidgetPlugin.cancelConfigure()

TODO #