Last week there was no newsletter because it was Christmas. So this issue contains more links than usual.
And the Flutter team published a lot of videos in the last two weeks, so there is plenty to watch.

This week I have been using build-time environment variables
to simplify flavors in some of the Flutter apps I am working on.
I find it more maintainable compared to having a main file for each flavor.

How are you improving the maintenance of your Flutter app? Do you implement these small changes to make
future work easier? Let me know by leaving a comment.

- Michele Volpato

Development 🧑‍💻

🔗 Visualize the Flutter render tree with Explo

Do you miss the Debug View Hierarchy from Xcode? The
Explo package attempts to
recreate that exact feature in Flutter. Read how to use it
in this article by Gabriel Terwesten.

🔗 Event-Based Flutter Example

Read how to implement the publisher-subscriber pattern using the
event_bus package in this new article by Bart van Wezel.

🔗 Weekend App: 3D Print Cost Calculator

Do you want to know how much a 3D printer would cost you? Reme Le Hane created an app for that.
He writes about it, and the technologies he used, in this article.

🔗 How to implement a shimmer effect in Flutter

In this article, by David Adegoke, you'll learn how to replace those ugly circular progress
indicators with a much better, from the user experience point of view, shimmering effect.

🔗 Flutter – How to deal with global variables

Global variables are frowned upon by many developers. You should avoid having a global state that can be modified and accessed by
any object anywhere in your code.
In the article Event-Based Flutter Example, linked
above, Bart van Wezel uses a global variable in the example code. In this article,
he proposes other solutions to get rid of it.

🔗 How to add Firebase to a Flutter app with FlutterFire CLI (including multiple flavors)

With the latest version of Flutter, you can delete the old GoogleService-Info.plist and google-services.json files,
and replace them with a Dart file generated with the new FlutterFire CLI.
Learn how in this tutorial by Andrea Bizzotto.

Backend 🗄

🔗 Announcing Appwrite Dart SDK 2.0

There is an update of the Dart SDK for Appwrite, the open-source
backend server that winks at Firebase. In October they released
a new version of the Flutter SDK, and now they updated the Dart
one as well. Read what's new in this article by Damodar Lohani.

Tools 🛠

🔗 Introducing Nylo v2.2.3 for Flutter | Micro-framework

Nylo is a collection of tools that makes it
easier for a developer to create a Flutter app. It includes a route
file that you can customize for route management, some configuration files,
and tools like an app icon generator. I haven't tried it yet. It
sounds to me that I am adding "one more tool" I need to keep updated.
But don't let yourself be scared by my doubts. Try it. Nylo is
maintained by Anthony Gordon.

[...]

Read the rest on my website.

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