In this tutorial, we will cover the basics of creating and using ListView
in Flutter.
ListView
in FlutterFlutter is a mobile UI toolkit and open-source SDK by Google. It is written in Dart, a programming language also developed by Google.
Flutter is used to develop mobile web apps, like native apps for iOS and Android or desktop apps for Linux, macOS, Windows, and ChromeOS. It is a complete SDK, meaning it provides devs everything they need to build applications: a rendering engine, UI components, testing frameworks, tooling, a router, and more.
What makes Flutter special is the ability to “write once, deploy anywhere.” It is also very easy to get acquainted with, regardless of your background in mobile, desktop, or web development.
Flutter also has tons of control and flexibility. For example, an Android app written in Flutter can be compiled to build a desktop or an iOS app; you don’t have to write a new project from scratch when you want to build your app for different devices. This functionality helps companies as well, because there is no need for separate teams (e.g., web, iOS, Android) on a single project because one project will compile across any major device.
I love using Flutter and can personally tell you the framework is awesome. A lot can be accomplished with just a few lines of code, and the routing system, security, tooling, and testing have been abstracted away by the framework, making my work very easy.
ListView
?ListView
is used to group several items in an array and display them in a scrollable list. The list can be scrolled vertically, horizontally, or displayed in a grid:
ListView
s are common in UI frameworks, and are one of the most popular UI widgets in the world. In fact, any mobile app or project must use ListView
in some capacity. ListView
s are used in Android, iOS, web apps, Django, and other frameworks, where they perform the same work but sometimes under a different name.
ListView
has recently become very sophisticated. For example, Android has RecyclerView
that extends from the basic ListView
widget with more complex and powerful controls and features.
ListView
can be optimized using many different tricks, and customized to suit your project’s specific needs. We will walk through these options in the sections below.
To begin, we need to scaffold a Flutter app. These are the initial steps on how to set up flutter and get it working on macOS. You can follow Flutter’s installation guide for other systems here.
The first step is to install Android Studio or Xcode for the platform for which you want to develop. In this tutorial, I will be developing for Android. Then, follow these steps:
$ cd ~/desiredfolder $ unzip ~/Downloads/fluttermacos2.0.2-stable.zip
$ export PATH="$PATH:DIRTOYOUR_FLUTTER/flutter/bin"
flutter doctor
in your terminalThis command will download the Flutter SDK and run diagnostics to determine if everything is good to go. At the end of the run, you may have this result:
[!] Android Studio (version 4.1) âś— Flutter plugin not installed; this adds Flutter specific functionality. âś— Dart plugin not installed; this adds Dart specific functionality. [!] Connected device ! No devices available ! Doctor found issues in 4 categories.
If you don’t have Flutter and Dart plugins in your Android Studio, all you need to do is:
Now, we need to run the Android Virtual Manager. To do that click on the AVD Manager icon in the top-right section of Android Studio. A dialog will appear with a default AVD device. On the Actions tab, click on the run icon.
Now, go back to your terminal, and scaffold a Flutter project:
flutter create myapp
This will create a Flutter project with folder name myapp
. I suggest you open the folder with VS Code (as long as you install Dart and Flutter plugins as well) so developing in it becomes easier.
Run the Flutter project:
flutter run
You will see the Flutter being run on the AVD:
We will work on the main.dart
file in lib
folder:
In our main.dart
, we see this:
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, visualDensity: VisualDensity.adaptivePlatformDensity, ), home: MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'), ); } }
The main function is the entry point of our app. Note that it calls the runApp
passing in the MyApp
instance, which is a widget.
Looking at MyApp
, you can see it’s a stateless widget (meaning it holds no local state). Everything in Flutter is a widget, and all widgets must extend the StatelessWidget
or StatefulWidget
, and must override or implement the build
method. The build
method must return a widget, which is what will be displayed on the screen.
Now, any widget being passed in the runApp
call becomes the root widget.
Here, the MyApp
widget returns a MaterialApp
widget, which wraps your app to pass Material-Design-specific functionality to all the widgets in the app. The MaterialApp
has configurations to be passed in. The title
sets the title in the app bar, the theme
sets the theme of the display, and the home
sets the widget that will be rendered on screen.
We will remove the MyHomePage(...)
and replace it with the ListView
widget that we will be creating:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ Text('List 1'), Text('List 2'), Text('List 3'), ], ); } }
Here, we have a ListViewHome
widget. Note that in the build
method we return a ListView
widget; this widget is built-in in Flutter, and will render the array data passed to it serially.
Looking at ListView
, see that we called it with padding
and children
props. The padding
sets the padding of the element on its container. children
is an array, which contains widgets that will be rendered by ListView
.
Here, we are rendering texts. We created Text
widgets to pass text we want rendered to them. So, the ListView will render three Text
widgets with following text: “List 1,””List 2,” and “List 3.”
Now, we will remove MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page')
from MyApp
and add ListViewHome()
:
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, visualDensity: VisualDensity.adaptivePlatformDensity, ), home: ListViewHome() ); } }
Save your file, and the Flutter server will reload. Go to your AVD to see the outcome:
Note how our list of text is rendered. But this is not very appealing, let’s make it more stylish:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Text('List 1')), ListTile( title: Text('List 2')), ListTile( title: Text('List 3')), ], ); } }
Here, we used ListTile
widget from Flutter. Let’s see the outcome:
The ListTile
widget makes the rendering more pronounced and padded. The text is separated from itself to be more readable and stylish. ListTile
is useful for making something like a settings menu page, or for text lists that do not change.
We can also render icons, cards, images, and custom widgets with ListView
.
ListView
To use icons in ListView
we can use the Icon
widget by replacing the Text
widget:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Icon(Icons.battery_full)), ListTile( title: Icon(Icons.anchor)), ListTile( title: Icon(Icons.access_alarm)), ListTile(title: Icon(Icons.ballot)) ], ); } }
The Icon
widget renders icons from the Material UI. The Icons
class is used to select icons by their name:
Note how the icons are rendered on the ListView
. Let’s display text alongside icons:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Text("Battery Full"), leading: Icon(Icons.battery_full)), ListTile( title: Text("Anchor"), leading: Icon(Icons.anchor)), ListTile( title: Text("Alarm"), leading: Icon(Icons.access_alarm)), ListTile( title: Text("Ballot"), leading: Icon(Icons.ballot)) ], ); } }
We use the leading
prop to make the icon the beginning of each ListTile
:
Icons can also be added to the right of the ListTile
:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Text("Battery Full"), leading: Icon(Icons.battery_full), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Anchor"), leading: Icon(Icons.anchor), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Alarm"), leading: Icon(Icons.access_alarm), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Ballot"), leading: Icon(Icons.ballot), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)) ], ); } }
The trailing
prop is used to set widgets to the far right of the ListTile
:
We can add a subtitle in ListView
using the subtitle
prop:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Text("Battery Full"),subtitle: Text("The battery is full."),leading: Icon(Icons.battery_full),trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Anchor"),subtitle: Text("Lower the anchor."), leading: Icon(Icons.anchor), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Alarm"),subtitle: Text("This is the time."), leading: Icon(Icons.access_alarm), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Ballot"),subtitle: Text("Cast your vote."), leading: Icon(Icons.ballot), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)) ], ); } }
The subtitle text appears below the title text, with a softer color:
ListView
In Flutter, we can use AssetImage
and NetworkImage
to render images.
ListView
is normally used to display avatars beside each item. Flutter has a CircleAvatar
widget to display a user’s profile image, or initials when absent.
Let’s add an image alongside the items in ListView
:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Text("Battery Full"), subtitle: Text("The battery is full."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: AssetImage("assets/js.png")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Anchor"),subtitle: Text("Lower the anchor."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: AssetImage("assets/react.png")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Alarm"),subtitle: Text("This is the time."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: AssetImage("assets/js.png")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Ballot"),subtitle: Text("Cast your vote."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: AssetImage("assets/react.png")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)) ], ); } }
In the leading
prop we add the CircleAvatar
widget, so the ListView
starts with the image. The backgroundImage
prop in the CircleAvatar
sets the background image of the widget.
We used the AssetImage
widget to load images from the local assets folder. But before we load images from the local directory, we need to add some sections to pubspec.yaml
file:
assets: - assets/
Now, save your files and the AVD will render the images in a list like so:
This is ListView
rendering images in circular form:
CircleAvatar( backgroundImage: AssetImage("assets/react.png"),child: Text('BA'), )
The child
prop value “BA” is displayed when the image is not loaded. You can learn more about CircleAvatar
here.
We can load our images from the internet rather than from our local directory using the NetworkImage
widget instead of the AssetImage
:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ ListTile( title: Text("Battery Full"), subtitle: Text("The battery is full."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1547721064-da6cfb341d50")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Anchor"),subtitle: Text("Lower the anchor."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/64/64/1*WSdkXxKtD8m54-1xp75cqQ.jpeg")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Alarm"),subtitle: Text("This is the time."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/64/64/1*WSdkXxKtD8m54-1xp75cqQ.jpeg")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)), ListTile( title: Text("Ballot"),subtitle: Text("Cast your vote."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/64/64/1*WSdkXxKtD8m54-1xp75cqQ.jpeg")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star)) ], ); } }
Note how we replaced AssetImage
with NetworkImage
. The NetworkImage
takes the URL of the image in its constructor, which makes the NetworkImage
widget pull the image from the internet and render it.
For the HTTP request to work we need to add permission <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
to our AndroidManifest.xml
file:
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" package="com.example.myapp"> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" /> <application ...> ... </application> </manifest>
Reload the AVD, stop the Flutter, and start it up again.
We will see the image is fetched and rendered:
ListView
Cards are used to display info in a concise and professional manner alongside a list. You can learn more about cards here.
To use Card in Flutter, we will use the Card
widget.
The Card
widget has a child
prop that lays out a child widget, like this:
Card(child: Text("A card."))
The Card
widget renders a Text
widget with the text “A card.”
Let’s apply it to ListView
so we can render Cards
in it:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ Card(child:ListTile( title: Text("Battery Full"), subtitle: Text("The battery is full."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1547721064-da6cfb341d50")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star))), Card(child:ListTile( title: Text("Anchor"),subtitle: Text("Lower the anchor."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/64/64/1*WSdkXxKtD8m54-1xp75cqQ.jpeg")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star))), Card(child:ListTile( title: Text("Alarm"),subtitle: Text("This is the time."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/64/64/1*WSdkXxKtD8m54-1xp75cqQ.jpeg")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star))), Card(child:ListTile( title: Text("Ballot"),subtitle: Text("Cast your vote."), leading: CircleAvatar(backgroundImage: NetworkImage("https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/64/64/1*WSdkXxKtD8m54-1xp75cqQ.jpeg")), trailing: Icon(Icons.star))) ], ); } }
I enclosed the ListTile
widget inside the Card
widget. It will render the following:
We can use the ListView
builder method to achieve the above with a more readable and maintainable approach:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { final titles = ["List 1", "List 2", "List 3"]; final subtitles = [ "Here is list 1 subtitle", "Here is list 2 subtitle", "Here is list 3 subtitle" ]; final icons = [Icons.ac_unit, Icons.access_alarm, Icons.access_time]; @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView.builder( itemCount: titles.length, itemBuilder: (context, index) { return Card( child: ListTile( title: Text(titles[index]), subtitle: Text(subtitles[index]), leading: CircleAvatar( backgroundImage: NetworkImage( "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1547721064-da6cfb341d50")), trailing: Icon(icons[index]))); }); } }
ListView
uses the builder method to build the list. I set the template of each list in the itemBuilder
prop, and the number of the list in the itemCount
prop.
The itemBuilder
function returns the template. Note how it returns a Card
widget with the ListTile
, the same as our above example. See that the title, subtitle, and icon content is picked from the titles, subtitles, icons, and arrays respectively:
Using itemBuilder
is better because it makes the ListView
creation very flexible and dynamic.
We can place a line between list items using the ListView.separated()
method:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { final titles = ["List 1", "List 2", "List 3"]; final subtitles = [ "Here is list 1 subtitle", "Here is list 2 subtitle", "Here is list 3 subtitle" ]; final icons = [Icons.ac_unit, Icons.access_alarm, Icons.access_time]; @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView.separated( separatorBuilder: (BuildContext context, int index) => const Divider(), itemCount: titles.length, itemBuilder: (context, index) { return Card( child: ListTile( title: Text(titles[index]), subtitle: Text(subtitles[index]), leading: CircleAvatar( backgroundImage: NetworkImage( "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1547721064-da6cfb341d50")), trailing: Icon(icons[index]))); }); } }
The only difference between our previous example and this is the separated()
method and the separatorBuilder
prop.
It will turn out like this:
ListView
ListView
allows us to style and customize our list items to our taste.
To do so, we will discard ListTile
. There are many widgets we can use to create our custom list items, but the most popular is the Container
widget:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView( padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8), children: <Widget>[ Container( height: 50, color: Colors.orange[600], child: const Center(child: Text('List 1')), ), Container( height: 50, color: Colors.red[500], child: const Center(child: Text('List 2')), ), Container( height: 50, color: Colors.blue[500], child: const Center(child: Text('List 3')), ), ], ); } }
We use Container
to render custom styles, just like div
in HTML.
In the above code, we passed in an array of four Container
s to ListView
. Each item in the array is a Container
widget.
In each Container
widget, we use the height
property to set the height of the container and the color
prop to set the background color. The child
prop contains a single widget that will be rendered by the container.
In the child
prop, we are using the Center
widget to center the content in the middle of the container, while the child
prop in the Center
widget renders text.
See the result:
ListView
We can add a touch event to the items in our ListView
. The touch event is attached to a touch handler, so when an item in the ListView
is touched or pressed, the handler is executed. This is similar to the events we register in HTML/JS apps:
class ListViewHome extends StatelessWidget { final titles = ["List 1", "List 2", "List 3"]; final subtitles = [ "Here is list 1 subtitle", "Here is list 2 subtitle", "Here is list 3 subtitle" ]; final icons = [Icons.ac_unit, Icons.access_alarm, Icons.access_time]; @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView.builder( itemCount: titles.length, itemBuilder: (context, index) { return Card( child: ListTile( onTap: () { Scaffold.of(context).showSnackBar(SnackBar( content: Text(titles[index] + ' pressed!'), )); }, title: Text(titles[index]), subtitle: Text(subtitles[index]), leading: CircleAvatar( backgroundImage: NetworkImage( "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1547721064-da6cfb341d50")), trailing: Icon(icons[index]))); }); } }
Note that we added an onTap
function prop to the ListTile
with a function handler attached to it. This listens for the touch event in the ListView
item, so whenever the list item is touched or pressed the function handler is executed. This displays a Snackbar when run, showing the “title” of the list item touched:
We can also add or remove items from ListView
. To do that, we have to make our widget a stateful widget.
We can make ListViewHome
a state widget by extending the class State
.
A stateful widget will extend StatefulWidget
class, and in its createState
method call ListViewHome
:
class ListViewHomeLayout extends StatefulWidget { @override ListViewHome createState() { return new ListViewHome(); } } class ListViewHome extends State<ListViewHomeLayout> { List<String> titles = ["List 1", "List 2", "List 3"]; final subtitles = [ "Here is list 1 subtitle", "Here is list 2 subtitle", "Here is list 3 subtitle" ]; final icons = [Icons.ac_unit, Icons.access_alarm, Icons.access_time]; @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return ListView.builder( itemCount: titles.length, itemBuilder: (context, index) { return Card( child: ListTile( onTap: () { setState(() { titles.add('List' + (titles.length+1).toString()); subtitles.add('Here is list' + (titles.length+1).toString() + ' subtitle'); icons.add(Icons.zoom_out_sharp); }); Scaffold.of(context).showSnackBar(SnackBar( content: Text(titles[index] + ' pressed!'), )); }, title: Text(titles[index]), subtitle: Text(subtitles[index]), leading: CircleAvatar( backgroundImage: NetworkImage( "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1547721064-da6cfb341d50")), trailing: Icon(icons[index]))); }); } }
Now, we will change the body
prop in MyApp
to render ListViewHomeLayout()
:
body: ListViewHomeLayout())
In the ListViewHome
, look inside the onTap
handler. We can use the setState
method to add items to the titles
, subtitles
, and icons
arrays. This will cause the ListView
to re-render and the UI is updated with the latest item added:
We covered a lot on ListViews here!
We began with Flutter, how it works and how useful it is. Then, we covered how to download the Flutter SDK, export it, and configure your Android Studio for Flutter development. Next, we saw how to scaffold and run Flutter.
We then learned how to create a ListView
, including different methods of creating instances of ListView
statically and dynamically. We learned how to add separate lines in each item, how to register touch events in the list items, and how to add items to the ListView
using Stateful
widgets.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I did writing it, and learned some useful tricks to using ListView
in your next project.
Flutter in Action — Eric Windmill
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6 Replies to "Creating ListViews in Flutter"
Nice deeply understanding.
Thanks đź’Ż
Thank you this help a lot
Thanks đź’Żđź’Ż
thx for this post. Have a question, can i put cards into listview but order by 3 in a row, then card4 go down to other row join with card5 and card6? How i do?
Thank You