We will create a simple application with the following components
- Default Main App Entry Point
- Use of FutureBuilder Widget to wait for data before rendering UI, concept used throughout the app
- Login Page
- Home Page
- Authentication Service
- Demonstrate the use of the Provider as discussed here in the Flutter Documentation Simple App State Management
There are plenty of examples online about setting up Firebase for Flutter so I will jump right into the code instead of walking thru the basics.
See Google CodeLabs Flutter for Firebase for step by step instructions for setting up you project on iOS or Android
Since we are just building the application and there is no functionalty to create users in the application right now, please login to you Firebase Console and add an user to your project. Please be sure to enable email authentication when updating the project in your Firebase Console.
first lets create the project
flutter create simple_firebase_auth
Now lets do some project cleanup, open up the project and delete the existing HomePage
and HomePageState
widget from the file main.dart
.
Change the home
property of the MaterialApp
widget to point to the LoginPage
widget we are about to create in the next section
The file should look similar to this when completed
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:simple_firebase_auth/login_page.dart';
void main() => runApp(MyApp());
class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
// This widget is the root of your application.
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return MaterialApp(
title: 'Flutter Demo',
theme: ThemeData(
primarySwatch: Colors.blue,
),
home: LoginPage(),
);
}
}
Lets walk through the creation of the LoginPage
for the application. We need capture an email
and a password
to pass to the AuthService
to call the login function.
We are going to create a simple page with the required TextFormField
widgets and one RaisedButton
to click to make the login happen.
- Open your editor and create a new file in the
lib
directory namedlogin_page.dart
- Paste the contents below into the file
login_page.dart
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
class LoginPage extends StatefulWidget {
@override
_LoginPageState createState() => _LoginPageState();
}
class _LoginPageState extends State<LoginPage> {
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Scaffold(
appBar: AppBar(
title: Text("Login Page Flutter Firebase"),
),
body: Center(
child: Text('Login Page Flutter Firebase Content'),
),
);
}
}
you should be able to run the code to see what the screen looks like now. Be sure to change the default route or home
property in main.dart
widget to LoginPage
while we work through the UI so you can see the changes with live reload
Lets make the body of the page a centered Column
with the childre of the column being primarily the TextFormField
s and the RaisedButton
the centered container to hold the form fields and buttons
body: Container(
padding: EdgeInsets.all(20.0),
child: Column()
)
Next add the actual form field widgets and the buttons as children of the Column
widget. We will do some basic styling of the form fields so that this looks presentable. See the Flutter documentation for more information on TextFormFields
body: Container(
padding: EdgeInsets.all(20.0),
child: Column(
children: <Widget>[
Text(
'Login Information',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 20),
),
TextFormField(
keyboardType: TextInputType.emailAddress,
decoration: InputDecoration(labelText: "Email Address")),
TextFormField(
obscureText: true,
decoration: InputDecoration(labelText: "Password")),
RaisedButton(child: Text("LOGIN"), onPressed: () {}),
],
),
),
Lets add some spacing between the fields in the column so it is more presentable. We are going to use the SizedBox
widget and set the height
property to get some spacing in the application. Replace the children
property of the Column
widget to get the desired spacing
children: <Widget>[
SizedBox(height: 20.0), // <= NEW
Text(
'Login Information',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 20),
),
SizedBox(height: 20.0), // <= NEW
TextFormField(
keyboardType: TextInputType.emailAddress,
decoration: InputDecoration(labelText: "Email Address")),
TextFormField(
obscureText: true,
decoration: InputDecoration(labelText: "Password")),
SizedBox(height: 20.0), // <= NEW
RaisedButton(child: Text("LOGIN"), onPressed: () {}),
],
We are going to be using a Form
widget and a GlobalKey
, additional information on these concepts can be found in the flutter cookbook section Building a form with validation
Add the formKey in the LoginPage
widget
class _LoginPageState extends State<LoginPage> {
final _formKey = GlobalKey<FormState>();
Then add two new fields to hold the email address and password values we will need to send to Firebase for authentication
class _LoginPageState extends State<LoginPage> {
final _formKey = GlobalKey<FormState>();
String _password;
String _email;
Next we add a property onSaved
to the TextFormFields
we have for email and password, when the save
method is called on the form, all of the widgets onSaved methods will be called to update the local variables.
TextFormField(
onSaved: (value) => _email = value, // <= NEW
keyboardType: TextInputType.emailAddress,
decoration: InputDecoration(labelText: "Email Address")),
TextFormField(
onSaved: (value) => _password = value, // <= NEW
obscureText: true,
decoration: InputDecoration(labelText: "Password")),
Wrap the Column
Widget with a new Form
Widget, the code should look similar to this
body: Container(
padding: EdgeInsets.all(20.0),
child: Form( // <= NEW
key: _formKey, // <= NEW
child: Column(
children: <Widget>[
....
],
),
),
),
Now that the fields are set, the TextFormField
are updated, we can using the _formKey
to not only validate the fields provided, but to also get the values locally by calling the save
method.
Replace the code in the RaisedButton
onPressed
method to the following, and you will see that we are getting the values for email and password set in out widget. We can now pass these values to the AuthService
that wraps the Firebase signin functionality.
// save the fields..
final form = _formKey.currentState;
form.save();
// Validate will return true if is valid, or false if invalid.
if (form.validate()) {
print("$_email $_password");
}
For now, we will keep the home page simple since we are just trying to demonstrate how the flow works. Ignore the commented out LogoutButton
widget, we will discuss that in a later section of the tutorial.
- Open your editor and create a new file in the
lib
directory namedhome_page.dart
- Paste the contents below into the file
home_page.dart
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
class HomePage extends StatefulWidget {
@override
_HomePageState createState() => _HomePageState();
}
class _HomePageState extends State<HomePage> {
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Scaffold(
appBar: AppBar(
title: Text("Home Flutter Firebase"),
//actions: <Widget>[LogoutButton()],
),
body: Center(
child: Text('Home Page Flutter Firebase Content'),
),
);
}
}
- Open
main.dart
and add the following import statement
import 'home_page.dart';
- Change the
home
property from this:
home: HomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'),
to this so you can verify that the page is working properly
home: HomePage(),
Here we will build out the authentication service separate from Firebase, validate that everything works and then integrate Firebase.
In this service, we are using a mixin called ChangeNotifier
and a method notifyListeners
this will allow for the widgets that are using this Service to be updated when the method is called. We are calling notifyListeners
when we update the currentUser
property because that means that the user has either logged in or logged out and we want the application to update based on the users state.
More information on
Provider
and State Management can be found here in the Flutter Documentation
What we need as a baseline is the following:
import 'dart:async';
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
class AuthService with ChangeNotifier {
var currentUser;
AuthService() {
print("new AuthService");
}
Future getUser() {
return Future.value(currentUser);
}
// wrappinhg the firebase calls
Future logout() {
this.currentUser = null;
notifyListeners();
return Future.value(currentUser);
}
// wrapping the firebase calls
Future createUser(
{String firstName,
String lastName,
String email,
String password}) async {}
// logs in the user if password matches
Future loginUser({String email, String password}) {
if (password == 'password123') {
this.currentUser = {'email': email};
notifyListeners();
return Future.value(currentUser);
} else {
this.currentUser = null;
return Future.value(null);
}
}
}
We will keep a local property in the service call currentUser
which is the object storing the user, when the user calls the login
method, if the password matches we will set currentUser
and the user will be logged in. This will now provide a user when the call is made to getUser
method. For logging the user out, we will set the currentUser
property to null indicating that we are no longer logged into the system.
The first challenge when working with the application is to determine which page to open when the application starts up. What we want to do here is determine if we have a user or not. We will be using an AuthService
we will created above combined with the FutureBuilder
widget from flutter to render the correct first page of either a HomePage
or a LoginPage
In main.dart
we will need to update the default main
method to look like this; we are wrapping the whole application with the ChangeNotifierProvider
to get the ability to scan up the widget tree and find an object of type AuthService
.
void main() => runApp(
ChangeNotifierProvider<AuthService>(
child: MyApp(),
builder: (BuildContext context) {
return AuthService();
},
),
);
Go into the main.dart
and make the following changes that will allow the MyApp
Widget to set the route. This widget will determine if the application should navigate to the HomePage
widget or LoginPage
widget when the app is launched.
class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
// This widget is the root of your application.
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return MaterialApp(
title: 'Flutter Demo',
theme: ThemeData(primarySwatch: Colors.blue),
home: FutureBuilder(
// get the Provider, and call the getUser method
future: Provider.of<AuthService>(context).getUser(),
// wait for the future to resolve and render the appropriate
// widget for HomePage or LoginPage
builder: (context, AsyncSnapshot snapshot) {
if (snapshot.connectionState == ConnectionState.done) {
return snapshot.hasData ? HomePage() : LoginPage();
} else {
return Container(color: Colors.white);
}
},
),
);
}
}
Now that the AuthService
can be accessed using the Provider, we can call the login function when the used clicks the button. Go and open the file login_page.dart
and find the onPressed
method for the login button and make the following change
// Validate will return true if is valid, or false if invalid.
if (form.validate()) {
var result = await Provider.of<AuthService>(context)
.loginUser(email: _email, password: _password);
if (result == null) {
// see project in github for this code
//return _buildShowErrorDialog(context,
// "Error Logging In With Those Credentials");
}
}
We are using the Provider.of
method to look up the widget tree and get our AuthService
and then we have access to all of the methods, specifically the loginUser
method.