Carousels in Flutter

Carousels are a great way to showcase different features of a product, advertise multiple products at once, or tell your brand story in chapters.

What is a Carousel?

A carousel is a Pin with multiple images and has a related short description for each image respectively which helps to convey context easily.

People see the carousel in their home feed just like any other Pin. They can swipe through the different images (or cards) directly from the feed. Or, they can tap on the Carousel and swipe through each card and its corresponding site, essentially swiping through the different landing pages.

Let's Build a Carousels like this

This is actually what we going to make by the end of this article. Load up your energy and let's get started.

Model Class

class TeslaCar {
  TeslaCar({this.model, this.image, this.description});

  String model;
  String image;
  String description;
}

We are going to creating a Tesla Car Carousel so we need to create a Model Class like above

model which describes the Model of the Car.
image will have a NetworkImage Url link of the Car.
description provides a description of the Car.

Array of Cars

var cars = [
  TeslaCar(
      model: 'Roadster',
      image: 'https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/1152734.jpg',
      description:
          'As an all-electric supercar, Roadster maximizes the potential of aerodynamic engineering—with record-setting performance and efficiency.'),
  TeslaCar(
      model: 'Model S',
      image: 'https://wallpapershome.com/images/pages/pic_v/8763.jpeg',
      description:
          "Model S sets an industry standard for performance and safety. Tesla’s all-electric powertrain delivers unparalleled performance in all weather conditions."),
  TeslaCar(
      model: 'Model 3',
      image: 'https://wallpapershome.com/images/pages/ico_v/20707.jpg',
      description:
          "Model 3 comes with the option of dual motor all-wheel drive, 20” Performance Wheels and Brakes and lowered suspension for total control, in all weather conditions."),
  TeslaCar(
      model: 'Model X',
      image:
          'https://images.hdqwalls.com/download/tesla-model-x-front-4k-5x-1080x1920.jpg',
      description:
          "Tesla’s all-electric powertrain delivers Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive, adaptive air suspension and the quickest acceleration of any SUV on the road—from zero to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds."),
  TeslaCar(
      model: 'Model Y',
      image:
          'https://www.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/images/car-reviews/first-drives/legacy/model_y_front_34_blue.jpg',
      description:
          "Tesla All-Wheel Drive has two ultra-responsive, independent electric motors that digitally control torque to the front and rear wheels—for far better handling, traction and stability."),
  TeslaCar(
      model: 'Cyber Truck',
      image: 'https://img.wallpapersafari.com/phone/750/1334/65/24/BAlZne.jpg',
      description:
          "The powerful drivetrain and low center of gravity provides extraordinary traction control and torque—enabling acceleration from 0-60 mph in as little as 2.9 seconds."),
];

We need an array of Cars for Carousels which are created using TeslaCar Class

Carousel Card

// ignore: must_be_immutable
class CarouselCard extends StatelessWidget {
  CarouselCard({this.car});

  TeslaCar car;

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Center(
      child: Padding(
        padding: EdgeInsets.only(
          top: 32.0,
          left: 8.0,
          right: 8.0,
        ),
        child: Container(
          width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width * 0.7,
          height: MediaQuery.of(context).size.height * 0.5,
          decoration: BoxDecoration(
            // color: Colors.redAccent,
            borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(16.0),
            boxShadow: [
              BoxShadow(
                  color: kShadowColor, offset: Offset(0, 20), blurRadius: 10.0),
            ],
            image: DecorationImage(
                image: NetworkImage(car.image), fit: BoxFit.cover),
          ),
          child: Column(
            crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.start,
            children: <Widget>[
              Padding(
                padding: const EdgeInsets.all(10.0),
                child: Container(
                  width: 44,
                  height: 44,
                  child: Image.network(
                    'https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Tesla_Motors.svg/595px-Tesla_Motors.svg.png',
                    fit: BoxFit.contain,
                  ),
                ),
              ),
              Spacer(),
              Padding(
                padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
                child: Row(
                  children: <Widget>[
                    Spacer(),
                    Column(
                      crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.end,
                      children: <Widget>[
                        Text(
                          car.model,
                          style: kCardTitleStyle,
                        ),
                        Container(
                          height: 100,
                          width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width * 0.6,
                          child: Text(
                            car.description,
                            style: kCardDescriptionTextStyle,
                            textAlign: TextAlign.end,
                            overflow: TextOverflow.ellipsis,
                            maxLines: 5,
                          ),
                        ),
                      ],
                    ),
                  ],
                ),
              )
            ],
          ),
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

We need a Carousel Card before creating a Carousel List So, follow the below steps to create a Carousel Card like above

Create a Stateless widget name it as CarouselCard
Declare a variable car of type TeslaCar because we are going pass TeslaCar object to get properties of the car
Create a Container with height and width properties. (Use your custom height and width, I used MediaQuery because these will be adjusted according to the screen size)
decoration is the property where we are going to give a borderRadius, boxShadow and image of the Card
In the child property we are going to rest of the things like Tesla logo, model name and description of the Car

Coursel List

class CarouselList extends StatefulWidget {
  @override
  _CarouselListState createState() => _CarouselListState();
}

class _CarouselListState extends State<CarouselList> {
  int currentPage = 0;

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        backgroundColor: kPrimaryColor,
        title: Text("Carousels"),
        centerTitle: false,
      ),
      body: Column(
        children: <Widget>[
          Spacer(),
          Container(
            height: MediaQuery.of(context).size.height * 0.6,
            width: double.infinity,
            child: PageView.builder(
              itemBuilder: (context, index) {
                return Opacity(
                  opacity: currentPage == index ? 1.0 : 0.8,
                  child: CarouselCard(
                    car: cars[index],
                  ),
                );
              },
              itemCount: cars.length,
              controller:
                  PageController(initialPage: 0, viewportFraction: 0.75),
              onPageChanged: (index) {
                setState(() {
                  currentPage = index;
                });
              },
            ),
          ),
          updateIndicators(),
          Spacer(),
          Column(
            children: <Widget>[
              Text('Flutter UI Component Library',style: kHeadlineLabelStyle,),
              Text('@irangareddy',style: kSubtitleStyle,)
            ],
          ),
          Spacer(),
        ],
      ),
    );
  }
}

We have successfully created a CarouselCard but we need to create a List before we actually witness the Carousels

Create a Stateful Widget and name it as CourselList.(You will shortly know, why we are created a StatefulWidget)
Create a Container and give a height > CarouselCard height and width = double.infinity because we know the height of the Card but don't know how much width occupies for list of the Cards
Here comes the important area child property, we are declaring a PageView

Important: About PageView(Skip if you know)

A PageView is almost like Lists but, it works page by page. I am using this to build Horizontal List.
Each child of a page view is forced to be the same size as the viewport.
You can use a PageController to control which page is visible in the view. In addition to being able to control the pixel offset of the content inside the PageView, a PageController also lets you control the offset in terms of pages, which are increments of the viewport size.
The PageController can also be used to control the PageController.initialPage, which determines which page is shown when the PageView is first constructed, and the PageController.viewportFraction, which determines the size of the pages as a fraction of the viewport size.

source: Flutter API Docs

These points give a clear idea of the PageView. I used these lines exactly form Docs because they are best.

Hope you got an exact idea of PageView

Back to Building the Carousel

With itembuilder property we are returning the cards of the list using index value
Assign the array length to itemCount
controller which manages view of the PageView using PageViewController and assign initialPage to 0(starting point), viewportFraction is default set to 1 i.e, each card occupies whole view. Change the viewportFraction to adjust the view.
create a currentPage variable to know the current page of the PageView and update the value in onPageChanged property
If you cleary observe the code we have an unimplemented updateIndicators() function

Adding Indicators

  Widget updateIndicators() {
    return Row(
      mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
      children: cars.map(
        (car) {
          var index = cars.indexOf(car);
          return Container(
            width: 7.0,
            height: 7.0,
            margin: EdgeInsets.symmetric(horizontal: 6.0),
            decoration: BoxDecoration(
              shape: BoxShape.circle,
              color:
                  currentPage == index ? Colors.red : Color(0xFFA6AEBD),
            ),
          );
        },
      ).toList(),
    );
  }

This an Indicators widget which helps users to know where they are and Total count of the Cards

Conclusion

Carousels convey context very fast and easy way to stick users with images and make advertising. You can further extend this as Navigating each card to a respective view and describing more about the context.

GitHub Link

If you like to improve your App Development Skills, even more in Flutter and SwiftUI. Feel free to dm me on Instagram or tweet to me on Twitter if you have any additional tips or feedback.

Thanks for reading!

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Ranga Reddy