Dart has been playing an essential role in flutter since the time of its inception. It empowers various features like hot to reload, cross-platform app development, desktop apps, and more by using flexible compiler technology in Dart.
Flutter apps are easy to develop with the help of Dart language, and there is one interactive UI as well for optimizing Dart syntax, and you may code Flutter widgets too. Now, the null safety support for the Flutter framework has been announced and it is considered as the next big achievement of the platform. It will help in making flutter app development services more robust and powerful.
You must be wondering what a null-safety feature is and how it can help in designing powerful apps in the flutter. Null safety is a new effective feature in a flutter that could handle null exceptions and helps to catch bugs too that are hard to identify. As a bonus amount, the null-safety feature helps to improve the product performance too.
Why is Null-Safety important?
Dart is a type-safe language, and it is tough to identify null variables in type-safe programming languages. This is the reason why null errors are pretty common in the case of the Dart programming language. It may further result in unexpected nulls in Dart code, and thousands of commits are used to fix these null errors.
The null safety feature makes these problems go away by validating your code as you are typing. Now, you are ready to deliver code with more confidence in less time. You can work more efficiently as a developer and avoid nulls in the run time.
These days Flutter apps are in trend as they can be used along with various development frameworks and assures maximum features and endless benefits to the company. Because of its cross-platform features, companies can save their money in designing different apps for each of the platforms but a single app will work fine for all targeted platforms. Also, it is easy to add more features to your product as or when you need it.
Null-Safety with Example:
Let us understand the concept with an example. When you assign a value to a string variable using type-safe language, we cannot use int or any other type of variable declaration. look at the snippet below for a better understanding:
Can you spot the error in this example? How can you assign an int value to the strong variable? The compiler will simply throw an error.
However, it is the right method to avoid exceptions but you cannot be sure of either this variable in Null or Not-null. This will make the application to behave unexpectedly during run time.
By implementing the null-safety feature here, it is possible to avoid null errors at the compile time that will save time. Well, it is easy to spot the error within a few lines of code but how to manage lengthy code proficiently. For complex applications, it may become a headache finding the error in the code.
This is the reason why null-safety feature is implemented in Flutter to make things easier for developers and quality experts. We can say it comes under one of the best code practices that developers should follow when writing code in Flutter. Let us see how can we fix the above code so that it should not throw exceptions during runtime.
In the first example, you simply have to add a question mark in the string parameter and define the variable as NULL. It will tell the compiler that this variable could be null as well it will not throw an error at the run time.
In the second example, you can define the variable Null then give it a value as well. It will guide the compiler that this variable can be nullable too.
In this way, you could handle null values in Flutter, by following the null-safety Dart feature effectively.
Null-Safety Design Principles
There are three core design principles to support null-safety in flutter app development services. These are not-null by default, incrementally adoptable, fully sound, etc. Let us see how these null-safety design principles work in Flutter.
- Not-null by default: till the time, it is not declared that a variable is NULL, it is considered not-null by default. It is set because the not-null variable is the common choice by developers.
- Incrementally adoptable: Dart code is usually lengthy, and it can be designed in part and integrated later once all parts are done.
- Fully sound: The Null-safety feature is fully sound that means you can trust this feature blindly, and it is easy to implement as well. Once you shift your project to null-safety features, you could reap the maximum benefits, not only in terms of bugs but faster execution too.
By looking at these design principles, you must have a sound idea of programming concepts in Flutter and null-safety features can be used for your next app. If this feature is implemented well then you will definitely see amazing benefits and improvements in your app.
Final words:
Don’t forget to practice with a few lines of code first then you can try it on complex programs too. Well, type-safe language is not easy to use and you need the support of an expert team of experienced Flutter developers to make things easier for you.
It would be great if you hire a Flutter app development company that has completed many successful projects in the past and also committed to keeping its employees updated as per the latest market trend.
As a software development company, our team has already started experimenting with the null-safety feature, and the results are really impressive and error-free. So, hire flutter developers in India and get your work done more proficiently and professionally.
We have a team of experts that is trained from time to time so that the implementation of new features can be managed wisely. Take the first step towards success and hire flutter developers in India to discuss your project requirements right away!