README

A mobile flutter app for FileBin.

Available on the Play Store.

Getting Started

This project is a starting point for a Flutter application.

• In Intellij or Android Studio (recommended), install the flutter and dart (dependency of flutter) plugins

• Set up Android SDK:

  • Install via IDE in a folder of your choice (you probably want it not be to installed as superuser)

  • Set the ANDROID_HOME variable so that IDE can detect it automatically

    export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/.android_sdk"
    export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin
    export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools
    

• Set up flutter SDK, you probably want this also on your PATH like ANDROID_HOME

  export PATH="$HOME/.flutter_sdk/bin/:$PATH"
  

• In the IDE, set the correct SDK paths (e.g. to flutter, dart, Android)

Start by installing dependencies and generating entities!

Working versions for SDK

[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 2.0.4, on Linux, locale de_DE.UTF-8)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 29.0.3)

Dependencies

• Run flutter packages pub get in project root folder to get dependencies or open the pubspec.yaml and click on the buttons provided by the IDE plugins

JSON Serialization Files

Generate required entities by using these commands:

• Build once: flutter packages pub run build_runner build --delete-conflicting-outputs
• File watcher: flutter packages pub run build_runner watch

Architecture

• Views have models
• Model classes use services
• Service classes use data repositories
• Data repositories use the Api class

Resulting data workflow: USER -> view -> model -> service -> repository -> API.

• NEVER use services in views (except for NavigationService or DialogService if needed)! Create a model function instead. The UI is then fully decoupled from any business logic.
• DON'T swallow exceptions with catch (_/e)
• ONLY handle ServiceException! Other exceptions are serious errors and should therefore result in an error (or get caught by a global catcher)
• ONLY handle ServiceException in model classes to show the user a result
• ALWAYS use the DialogService (also possible from within a service/model) and DON'T create separate dialogs
• ALWAYS use the NavigationService for navigation and NOT Navigation.of(...)

Build & Release

Release with Fastlane

You need fastlane installed locally. Look at the initial setup on how to do that.

Fastlane is used to manage the app store presentation and automatic uploading to the Play Store and to the App Store. With fastlane you can do common tasks in a collaborative way, e.g. publishing to or adapting the texts for the different stores from the commandline.

Before using fastlane you need to properly setup signing, otherwise building will not work.

Initial setup should already be done but this link helps for initial project setup: https://flutter.dev/docs/deployment/cd.

Signing & store access setup

You need to setup individually on your machine for signing and afterwards publish an app for the different platforms.

Android

• Copy android/key.properties.example to android/key.properties
• Adjust properties matching your setup and folder structure
• Point to the android/fastlane/secrets/key.jks you just extracted and ask for the store password.
• Copy the api-access.json file into android/fastlane/secrets/

iOS

fastlane's match capability helps with Apple's singing, secure keys, and profiles. Use fastlane match in the ios folder to download existing profiles. They're stored in a separate git repository and are encrypted.

You need access to the git repository in which those private files reside.

Usage

Go into the platform directory you want to build for, e.g. ios/ or android/ and then look into the Fastlane file which lanes are present. Run a lane via fastlane <platform> <lane>, e.g. use the following to build for Android fastlane android build.

Important! For iOS you need to execute pod install first. You also need cocoapods installed.

Android

Use fastlane android beta to build and upload a new beta version to the Play Store.

iOS

For iOS you need to execute fastlane ios build before uploading to testflight with fastlane ios beta.

Release manually (not recommended)

See the following links on how to setup:

• https://flutter.dev/docs/deployment/android
• https://flutter.dev/docs/deployment/ios

To have a clean environment, when building please follow the steps precisely:

• Clean your local setup with flutter clean
• Fetch dependencies with flutter pub get
• Generate model files with flutter packages pub run build_runner build --delete-conflicting-outputs
• Increase version in pubspec.yaml if needed or not already done
• Build Android and iOS apps
  • For Android generate an app bundle with flutter build appbundle or flutter build apk.
  • For iOS use flutter build ios --release --no-codesign

Debug

You should use an emulator or real device and Android Studio's internal capability to communicate and to deploy on it. If you want to build a plain debug version, ensure to have a clean environment like mentioned above and then execute the following:

flutter build apk --debug
flutter build ios --debug

Troubleshooting

Seeing something like the following? Remove your .gradle/ folder!

java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: com.android.builder.internal.aapt.v2.Aapt2InternalException: AAPT2 aapt2-3.2.1-4818971-linux Daemon #0: Daemon startup failed
This should not happen under normal circumstances, please file an issue if it does.

Flutter problems?

Ensure to be on the version mentioned above which should be in the stable branch. If everything breaks, start from fresh via flutter clean and maybe re-do all necessary steps to get the app working in the first place.