DEV Community: Ebube Life

Wirelessly Debug Your Code On Pysical Android Device In Flutter

Ebube Life — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 15:35:20 +0000

Debugging your code on a physical device, remains the best way to really feel your app and ensure that you understand the way the app will work on the devices of your users.

But it can also be risky having your phone plugged constantly to your computer's USB port. Some computer USB ports do not really control current flow properly and power surges might damage your phone's charging port. Plus, what if your phone cord is short? or loose and doesn't allow much freedom?

So, you can use wireless debugging and here is how to wirelessly build, run and debug your apps on your physical device. First of all install ADB (Android Debug Bridge). ADB contains a set of tools to let you debug your app on your device.

INSTALL ADB ON MAC

To install ADB on mac, install with Home brew.

To install Homebrew, open a terminal and run:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)

After, run the following to install ADB:

brew install android-platform-tools --cask

These will take a while. So be patient and have a good network connection.

INSTALL ADB ON WINDOWS

Use this link to download Android SDK platform tools for windows.
Extract the zip file into a folder that is easily accessible. Something like C:\platform-tools

Now open that folder, and then Shift + right click to open command prompt right in that folder. Or just open command prompt and cd into the platform-tools folder.

After setting up ADB on your computer. Connect your phone to it by USB and also ensure your phone and computer are on the same network (LAN). Or you could just connect your computer to your phone's network or vice versa or connect both to same router.

Go to your phone's settings, go to about phone and click to view details of your phone. You should find the IP address there. Note it.

Come back to the terminal. If you are on windows, ensure you are in the ADB directory. If you installed with homebrew on mac , just run the script to start ADB daemon:

adb devices

You should see a list of devices and yours should be there.

Now run:

adb tcpip 5555

This restarts the the TCP

Go ahead and run:

adb connect <your android phone IP address here>

That is it! If its successful, you will see a success message on the terminal and you can go ahead to disconnect your phone. You will notice that the device will still be listed on the flutter's list of valid devices for debugging.

For Wireless Debugging With iPhone

Ensure you're running Mac OS 10.12.0 and above
Ensure you are running iOS 11 and above
Ensure you are running Xcode 9
Connect your Mac and iphone to same network

Open Xcode and go to window tab. On the drop-down menu, select devices and emulators

Select devices tab and select your devices from connected section.

Choose connect via network

You are good to go!

Enjoy!

I Switched To Flutter From Native Android Development- My Story

Ebube Life — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 15:00:58 +0000

After a few years a web developer, I delved fully into mobile development(specifically native android development) in 2016. For more than three years, I worked on five projects that opened me up into the world of Java and android. Mid-way, I delved into core Java coding too. It was fun and cool, I landed a job that payed me well. I loved java, I loved the structure, the rules, the way it forced me to observe standard coding patterns. Well until… my friend came to me with a job from a client.

The client wanted an iOS and Android versions of a mini-banking app. Prior to this moment, I had experience building just for android. I hadn’t written enough of Swift/Objective-C to take on such a project. Well, once, I converted java code from an android app into platform specific, code for iOS (in Objective-C) using Multi-Engine OS. The experience was fairly immersing, but not too deep.

So I took the job, and immediately I just knew, my only option was flutter. I’m not a big fan of Javascript and excessive usage of command terminals, so I didn’t go for React Native. I had 15 days to deliver the job, meaning, I had 15 days to learn dart, flutter framework, plugins, resources, layouts, structures, build the app, debug and test on both platforms and deploy. I was in for it, but I was excited. I delved in. Long story cut short — After a lot of hours spent perusing Stackoverflow, and Github pages, I delivered the apps within 18 days. Damn! But the experience was amazing. Everything was clicking, responsive. I didn’t have to struggle with separating layouts from classes. I didn’t have to struggle with creating over three classes just to implement something similar to a recyclerview. By the time I was done, I was hooked on flutter and I stuck with it.

Till date, I haven’t been writing much of Java, I’ve rebuilt my company’s mobile apps in flutter, I’ve rebuilt selected features of past projects in flutter, and I’m currently working on a bunch flutter apps. I’ve come across several tools and I’ve met a lot of amazing people within the flutter community.

Flutter is a powerful framework, that absolves you away from the roughest aspects of mobile development . Of course cross-platform development isn’t without its own issues and no matter how good a programmer you are, the app might not give you the 100% performance compared to native apps. All the same, flutter offers you speed, high level efficiency, out of the box animations, responsive material design, flutter apps are already optimized by default and there is also a lossless compression feature that removes all unused classes and dead code within your flutter app. Its called “tree shaking”.

Flutter is still new, and the community is grown and active, you’re guaranteed support and continuity. No worries, your project is safe with flutter. Flutter developers, who don’t have access to a mac, can build once on windows, and build iOS versions of the app using a free platform like Codemagic.io .

As long as flutter remains effective, I think I’ll stay with it!

My Journey Into Tech

Ebube Life — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 14:55:02 +0000

I can't really remember how I started my journey into tech. It has been a while. But I know what brought me here - passion . That passion will keep me here till I age and can't move anymore.

I love coding... scratch that. I'm crazy about coding. I love building software and I have a passion for building software that work.

I'm a full stack dev, a mobile dev and I believe joining this community will make me a better developer.