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Exploring Flutter Slivers: A Comprehensive Guide

Written by Kshitiz Sharma | Jan 23, 2024 7:50:38 AM

Flutter, Google's UI toolkit, offers a rich set of widgets to create beautiful and responsive user interfaces. Among these, the Sliver widgets play a crucial role in building flexible and dynamic layouts. In this article, we'll explore Flutter Slivers and provide code snippets to illustrate their usage.

Understanding Slivers

In Flutter, a "Sliver" is a portion of a scrollable area. Slivers are lightweight, flexible, and can be composed to create complex scrollable UIs. They work seamlessly with various scrolling widgets like `CustomScrollView`, `NestedScrollView`, and more.

Basic Anatomy of a Sliver: A Sliver typically consists of three main components:

  1. SliverAppBar: This is a special type of app bar that integrates with Slivers. It can expand and contract based on the scroll position.
  2. SliverList: Represents a linear list of items. It is an efficient way to display a large number of children without creating all the widgets at once.
  3. SliverGrid: Similar to SliverList, it arranges its children in a grid.

Implementing a Basic Sliver

Let's start with a simple example using `CustomScrollView` with a `SliverAppBar` and a `SliverList`.

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';


void main() {

  runApp(MyApp());

}


class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {

  @override

  Widget build(BuildContext context) {

    return MaterialApp(

      home: Scaffold(

        body: CustomScrollView(

          slivers: [

            SliverAppBar(

              expandedHeight: 200.0,

              flexibleSpace: FlexibleSpaceBar(

                title: Text('Flutter Slivers'),

                background: Image.network(

                  'https://example.com/image.jpg',

                  fit: BoxFit.cover,

                ),

              ),

            ),

            SliverList(

              delegate: SliverChildBuilderDelegate(

                (BuildContext context, int index) {

                  return ListTile(

                    title: Text('Item $index'),

                  );

                },

                childCount: 50,

              ),

            ),

          ],

        ),

      ),

    );

  }

}

 

In this example, we create a `CustomScrollView` with a `SliverAppBar` containing an image and a title. Below the app bar, there's a `SliverList` displaying a list of 50 items using `SliverChildBuilderDelegate`.

Advanced Sliver Techniques

Custom SliverGrid

SliverGrid(

  gridDelegate: SliverGridDelegateWithFixedCrossAxisCount(

    crossAxisCount: 2,

    crossAxisSpacing: 8.0,

    mainAxisSpacing: 8.0,

    childAspectRatio: 1.0,

  ),

  delegate: SliverChildBuilderDelegate(

    (BuildContext context, int index) {

      return Card(

        child: Center(

          child: Text('Item $index'),

        ),

      );

    },

    childCount: 20,

  ),

),

 

Here, we use `SliverGrid` to create a grid layout with a custom delegate.

Nested Scroll Views

NestedScrollView(

  headerSliverBuilder: (BuildContext context, bool innerBoxIsScrolled) {

    return [

      SliverAppBar(

        expandedHeight: 200.0,

        pinned: true,

        flexibleSpace: FlexibleSpaceBar(

          title: Text('Nested Scroll View'),

          background: Image.network(

            'https://example.com/image.jpg',

            fit: BoxFit.cover,

          ),

        ),

      ),

    ];

  },

  body: SliverList(

    delegate: SliverChildBuilderDelegate(

      (BuildContext context, int index) {

        return ListTile(

          title: Text('Item $index'),

        );

      },

      childCount: 50,

    ),

  ),

),

 

In this example, we use `NestedScrollView` to create a scroll view with a collapsible app bar.

Conclusion

Flutter Slivers provides a powerful way to build complex and responsive UIs. Whether you're creating a simple list or a sophisticated grid, Slivers offers the flexibility needed for diverse design requirements. Experiment with these code snippets to enhance your Flutter app's scrolling experience.

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