asc-lab/personal-insurance-flutter-poc

Flutter project example covering concerns commonly encountered in business apps.

Flutter PoC: Personal Insurance

A Flutter project example covering concerns commonly encountered in business apps.

Blog Post

https://altkomsoftware.pl/blog/flutter-dart-quickly-build-mobile-app-without-losing-much-hair/

Dependency

The application attempts to access a running Mockoon Mock API at startup. If the local server is not running, application will simply fail with a blank screen.

• Mockoon
  • https://mockoon.com/
  • https://github.com/mockoon/mockoon
    • e.g. MacOS Install: brew cask install mockoon

Running

• Ensure Mockoon Environment is configured with mockoon_environment - (import JSON into Mockoon).
• Ensure Mockoon is running locally
• Ensure API routes are accessible on 0.0.0.0 i.e. localhost, 127.0.0.1
  • e.g. http://localhost:3000/personalInsuranceFlutter/getDicts
• Ensure the apiURL static field in lib/services/Helper class is correctly set
  • Localhost setting for apiURL for The Android and iOS will differ, see below.
  • The helper will auto-adapt the apiURL based on Platform.

If the local server is not running, application will show an error on startup.

Android

• apiURL = "http://10.0.2.2:3000/personalInsuranceFlutter/";
• Ensure the emulator can access localhost via 10.0.2.2 in Dart code.

iOS

• apiURL = "http://localhost:3000/personalInsuranceFlutter/";

The iOS Simulator uses the host machine network so you should be able to just use localhost or your machines IP address, whichever IP your web service is listening on.

More info on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6077888/how-do-i-access-the-host-machine-itself-from-the-iphone-simulator

You will need to add the following to the project's Info.plist.

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
        <true/>
</dict>  

Otherwise this error is going to happen.

Cannot start load of Task <xx-xx>.<x> since it does not conform to ATS policy.

personal-insurance-flutter-poc's Issues

Add Licence to Project

Licence is missing on source code.

https://opensource.guide/

An MIT Licence would be a good one to consider:

https://opensource.guide/legal/#which-open-source-license-is-appropriate-for-my-project

Template:

https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/

Migrate to AndroidX

Follow the link for instructions:

https://flutter.dev/docs/development/androidx-migration

Consider upgrading Android Project

Consider:

• Grade version upgrade
• Espresso & JUnit versions upgrade
• Min/Target SDK
• Commenting out android.enableD8 on gradle.properties, as noted here:

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/04/android-studio-switching-to-d8-dexer.html

Consider handling connection error at startup

When the application cannot reach the API URL it hangs with a blank screen.

Consider showing an informative dialog that connection cannot be made, etc.

Consider adapting API URL per Platform

Considering switching to the correct localhost loopback URI per platform. This will prevent the need to change the Helper.apiURL and recompile when switching across platform runs.