Building Flutter PullToRefresh in just 15 minutes

Building Flutter PullToRefresh in just 15 minutes

The pull-to-refresh pattern lets a user pull down on a list of data using touch in order to retrieve more data. The "Pull-to-refresh" gesture was first introduced by Loren Brichter in the Tweetie app and in no time it became so popular that countless apps adopted this gesture. Today “pull-to-refresh” feature is a natural part of many popular apps, including Twitter, Gmail, Tweetbot, and others.

What you’ll build?

In this tutorial, you’ll build a mobile app featuring a PullToRefresh gesture using the Flutter SDK. Your app will:

  • Display a dynamic list with a random number of items

  • Each time you PullToRefresh the no of items will change in the list

That’s how our PullToRefresh gonna work

This tutorial focuses on adding a PullToRefresh gesture to a Flutter app. Non-relevant concepts and code blocks are glossed over and are provided for you to simply copy and paste.

Github Repository | shyvum

Widget In Focus | RefreshIndicator

Setting up Flutter on your machine

The detailed steps to install Flutter on your personal computer & getting started with Flutter is available in the following blog

Component Syntax

The basic format of PullToRefresh gesture looks like the one below:

Implementation

The most generic way to implement PullToRefresh is as follows:

Importing dart libraries to main.dart file

Import dart:async & dart:math libraries to your main.dart file by adding the following line at the starting of the file:

Putting Code in action

Amend your main.dart file as per the following code:

Building & running the application

  • Connect your Emulator or physical Android device to test the application.

  • Click on Build & Run.

  • And Boooom 🧨, your app is ready. The final build would look like the below illustration.

The final output of the implementation

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