All 7 Flutter Plugin & Package Development questions
More in Flutter Plugin & Package Development
What is the difference between a Dart package and a Flutter plugin, and when would you specifically need to build a plugin rather than simply a pure Dart package? How does a federated plugin architecture let several genuinely separate teams or contributors independently maintain the different platform specific implementations of exactly the same overall shared plugin? How should you properly write both unit tests and platform specific integration tests for a Flutter plugin to genuinely verify it correctly works across every single one of its supported platforms? What should a well written pubspec.yaml and a genuinely thorough README file for a Flutter plugin actually include, to help other developers properly understand how to correctly use and depend on it? How do you properly handle a breaking native API change on one specific platform, such as a new required Android permission model, while genuinely still maintaining backward compatibility for consumers of your plugin using an older version of that same platform? How can you design a plugin's own public Dart API to remain genuinely stable and backward compatible across several successive plugin versions, even as its own internal native implementation continues to meaningfully evolve and change over time?
Advertisement
Flutter › Flutter Plugin & Package Development

What is the basic folder structure of a typical Flutter plugin project, and how does it separate the shared Dart interface from each individual platform's own specific native implementation?

Beginner

Answer

A typical Flutter plugin project's folder structure includes a lib folder containing the shared Dart code that actually exposes your plugin's own public facing API, along with separate dedicated android and ios folders each containing that specific platform's own actual native implementation code, and this clear separation lets consumers of your plugin interact with just one single, consistent Dart interface while your plugin itself internally and transparently delegates the genuine underlying platform specific work to whichever native implementation is actually appropriate for the specific device the app happens to actually be currently running on.
my_plugin/
  lib/
    my_plugin.dart
  android/
    src/main/kotlin/
  ios/
    Classes/
Real-world example A plugin providing access to a device's specific battery level exposes just one single, clean getBatteryLevel method through its shared Dart interface, while internally properly delegating to entirely separate native Kotlin code on Android and separate native Swift code on iOS respectively.

Common follow-ups: What is a federated plugin, and how does it further separate these platform implementations into entirely distinct separate packages?;How do you properly test a plugin's own specific native platform code?

Platform Channels (Native Android & iOS Integration);Dependency Injection in Flutter (GetIt & Service Locator)
All 7 Flutter Plugin & Package Development questions