Riverpod

A portrait painting style image of a pirate holding an iPhone.

by The Captain

on
August 3, 2023

Title: Flutter Riverpod State Management Framework: An Alternative to Provider

When it comes to state management in Flutter, one of the most popular choices is the Provider package. However, there is an alternative framework that offers a more modern and efficient approach - Riverpod. In this tutorial, we will explore the features and advantages of Riverpod, and compare it with Provider.

Riverpod is built on top of Provider and provides a more declarative way to manage state. It is designed to be easy to use, scalable, and provides better performance optimizations.

Let's start by setting up Riverpod in our Flutter project. First, add the riverpod dependency to your pubspec.yaml file:

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter
  riverpod: ^1.0.0}

Next, create a new provider.dart file in your project. This file will contain all your state provider classes. Here's an example:

import 'package:riverpod/riverpod.dart';

final counterProvider = Provider((ref) => 0);

final greetingProvider = Provider((ref) {
  final count = ref.watch(counterProvider);
  return "Hello, you clicked the button $count times!";
});}

In this example, we define two providers: counterProvider and greetingProvider. The counterProvider provides an integer value of 0, and the greetingProvider depends on the counterProvider and returns a greeting message based on the current count.

To access these providers in our UI, we can use the Consumer widget provided by Riverpod:

Consumer(
  builder: (context, watch, _) {
    final count = watch(counterProvider);
    final greeting = watch(greetingProvider);

    return Column(
      mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
      children: [
        Text(
          greeting,
          style: TextStyle(fontSize: 24),
        ),
        SizedBox(height: 16),
        ElevatedButton(
          onPressed: () => context.read(counterProvider).state++,
          child: Text("Increment"),
        ),
        Text(
          "Counter: $count",
          style: TextStyle(fontSize: 24),
        ),
      ],
    );
  },
),}

By using watch instead of context.read, Riverpod automatically rebuilds only the necessary parts of the UI when the state changes. This helps optimize performance, especially in larger Flutter applications.

One key advantage of Riverpod is its support for ScopedProvider. ScopedProvider allows us to keep our state localized to a specific part of the widget tree. This is especially useful for nested views or complex state management scenarios.

Riverpod also provides excellent support for AsyncValue and FutureProvider. With these, managing asynchronous operations becomes much easier. Riverpod takes care of handling loading, error, and data states for us.

In conclusion, Riverpod is a powerful and modern state management framework that provides a better and more efficient way to manage state in Flutter applications. With its declarative approach and excellent performance optimizations, it is a great alternative to the popular Provider package.