User Defined Types

So far we've used cells holding strings and numbers, and an enum. What about types defined by your own classes? A cell can generally hold a value of any type. This section goes over the tools to make working with user defined types more convenient.

Live Cell Extension

The live_cell_extension package provides a source code generator that allows you to extend the core cell interfaces, ValueCell and MutableCell, with accessors for properties of your own classes.

To understand what this means, consider the following class:

Person class

class Person {
    final String firstName;
    final String lastName;
    final int age;
    
    const Person({
        required this.firstName,
        required this.lastName,
        required this.age
    });
}

Let's say you have a cell holding a Person:

Person cell

final person = MutableCell(
    Person(
        firstName: 'John',
        lastName: 'Smith',
        age: 25
    )
);

To access a property of the Person held in the cell, you will need to defined a computed cell:

Accessing properties in cells

final firstName = ValueCell.computed(() => person().firstName);

If you want the firstName cell to be settable, so that setting the value of firstName updates the person cell, you'll need to define a copyWith method and a mutable computed cell:

Mutating properties in cells

final firstName = MutableCell.computed(() => person().firstName, (name) {
    person.value = person.value.copyWith(
        firstName: name
    );
});

This is the definition of boilerplate and will quickly become tiring.

The live_cell_extension package automatically generates this code for you, so that instead of the above, you can write the following:

Generated ValueCell property accessors

final firstName = person.firstName;

And to update the value of the firstName property:

Generated MutableCell property accessors

person.firstName.value = 'Jane';

That's it, no need to write a copyWith method either. This ties in with Live Cell's design principle that cells should be indistinguishable, as much as is possible, from the values they hold.

Generating the Code

To make this work you'll need to add the live_cell_extension package to the dev_dependencies of your pubspec.yaml:

dev_dependencies:
    live_cell_extension: 0.5.9
    ...

Then annotate the classes, for which you want accessors to be generated, with CellExtension. If you want mutable cell accessors to also be generated, add mutable: true to the annotation arguments.

person.dart

part 'person.g.dart';

@CellExtension(mutable: true)
class Person {
    final String firstName;
    final String lastName;
    final int age;
    
    const Person({
        required this.firstName,
        required this.lastName,
        required this.age
    });
}

caution

Don't forget to include the <filename>.g.dart file. This is where the code will be generated.

Next you'll need to run the following command in the root directory of your project:

dart run build_runner build

This will generate the .g.dart files, which contain the generated class property accessors.

The ValueCell accessors are defined in an extension with the name of the class followed by CellExtension. The MutableCell accessors are defined in an extension with the name of the class followed by MutableCellExtension.

Binding to Properties

Using the generated property accessors, we can define a form for populating the class properties simply by binding the property cells, retrieved using the generated accessors, to the appropriate widgets.

Binding directly to properties

class PersonForm extends CellWidget {
    final MutableCell<Person> person;
    
    PersonForm(this.person);
    
    @override
    Widget build(BuildContext context) => Column(
    children: [
        Text('First Name:'),
        LiveTextField(
            content: person.firstName
        ),
        Text('Last Name:'),
        LiveTextField(
            content: person.lastName
        ),
        Text('Age:'),
        Numberfield(person.age)
    ]
)

We used the Numberfield widget, defined earlier, for the age property.

info

We defined the form as a class because we intend to reuse it in other widgets.

We can then use this form as follows:

CellWidget.builder((_) {
  final person = MutableCell(
      Person(
          firstName: 'John',
          lastName: 'Smith',
          age: 25
      )
  );
    
  return Column(
    children: [
      PersonForm(person),
      Text('${person.firstName()} ${person.lastName()}: ${person.age()} years'),
      ElevatedButton(
        child: Text('Save'),
        // A hypothetical savePerson function
        onPressed: () => savePerson(person.value)
      ),
      ElevatedButton(
        child: Text('Reset'),
        onPressed: () => person.value = Person(
          firstName: 'John',
          lastName: 'Smith',
          age: 25
        )
      )
    ]
  );
});

In this example we used the personForm widget defined earlier.

• The details of the person are displayed in a Text, which is automatically updated when the person's details are changed.
• The "Save" button saves the entered details, which are held in the person cell.
• The "Reset" button resets the form fields to their defaults by directly assigning a default Person to the person cell.

The benefits of this, as opposed to using the tools already available in Flutter, are:

• No need to write event handlers and state synchronization code for acquiring input from the user. This is all handled automatically.
• You can focus directly on the representation of your data and think in terms of your data, rather than thinking in terms of widget State.
• Your widgets are bound directly to your data and kept in sync. There is no chance of you accidentally forgetting to synchronize them with your data and vice versa, which eliminates a whole class of bugs.