freezed_weather

A rewrite of Bloc tutorial: Flutter Weather Tutorial using freezed.

• Bloc is used instead of Cubit (Cubit vs Bloc)
  • Bloc provides better traceability of what's happening.
    • onTransition shows the event that triggers the new state
  • Bloc allows advanced event transformations
  • However, bloc requires more detailed implementation. freezed code generation could be used to reduce the amount of coding.
• freezed is used to compare data models. equatable is not used anymore.
  • A @freezed class comes with generated copyWith implementation, which is not prone to human-made errors (e.g., forget to add a variable into prop list, which is the mistake I've made).
• Use wttr.in as the remote data provider.
  • MetaWeather API is not available since May 2022.
  • Current workaround
    • A new package wttr_in_api, which implements a client for wttr.in, is created.
    • WeatherRepository is an abstract class now.
    • The previous WeatherRepository becomes MetaWeatherWeatherRepository.
    • A new WttrInWeatherRepository is created to use wttr_in_api.
    • WeatherRepository needs to be instantiated through WeatherRepository.instance() now.

How to Start

Flutter version

Tested on Flutter 3.13.9 / Dart 3.1.5, newer versions should also work.

Setting Up Packages

• Navigate to each package directory in ./packages

• Install dependencies:

  dart pub get

• Generate necessary files (*.g.dart and *.freezed.dart):

  dart run build_runner build -d

Setting Up the App

• In the project root, install dependencies:

  flutter pub get

• Generate necessary files (*.g.dart and *.freezed.dart):

  dart run build_runner build -d

Notable features

@freezed data models

• copyWith, == and toString implementation

• Properties can be null

  Previously, Weather.empty is provided in initial WeatherState because equatable does not allow null in props. freezed handles null properly so we can just use null as weather in the state when weather is not available yet (e.g., in the initial state). Both work fine, it's only a matter of choice so empty is kept in lib/weather/models/weather.dart.

@freezed event & state for bloc

Persist only the loaded state

In the original tutorial, all states are cached. Imagine the scenario: When an error happens, the user terminates the app and reopens it. Guess what? The error state is served immediately!

The bloc is working properly but the user experience is not optimal. WeatherBloc.toJson is modified to only cache the successfully loaded state. When the user opens the app, it always shows that last loaded weather (or the initial state if nothing happens yet). Again, it's a matter of choice of when to cache the states.

Changelog

After Dart 3.0 & Flutter 3.10

• Updated to build with Flutter 3.13.9.
• Note: Use tag 4.0 to fetch earlier scripts to work with Flutter versions < 3.10.

Update hydrated_bloc to 9.0.0

• HydratedBlocOverrides removed in favor of HydratedBloc.storage API.
• Note: Use tag 3.0 to fetch code compatible with the old API.

MetaWeather API Deprecation

A new package wttr_in_api, which implements a client for wttr.in, is created. The layered structure makes it possible to switch between different API providers. WeatherRepository is refactored to an abstract class to reflect this.

Use tag 2.0 to fetch the previous project, which uses only the MetaWeather API.

After Flutter 3.0

This tutorial has been rewritten after the releases of Flutter 3.0, freezed 2.0.3, and hydrated_bloc 9.0.0-dev.2.

• Note: This version is incompatible with previous versions. Use tag 1.0 to fetch older scripts.