Components
Custom Components or just user-defined Components in FlutterFlow are custom widgets you create to meet specific needs in your app. These components can be designed using FlutterFlow's drag-and-drop interface, allowing you to create reusable UI elements. This approach ensures consistency, saves time, and simplifies maintenance across your project.
Creating a component from scratch
To create a component from scratch, you can do the following:
Convert into a component
If you have already built a complex widget into your page and realize later that it can serve as a reusable component, you can convert that entire widget into a component and reuse it multiple times.
To convert a complex widget into a reusable component, select the root widget that contains the entire widget you want to convert, and follow these steps:
Creating a component from a popular template
FlutterFlow offers multiple popular templates for components across various use cases that you can apply to your project in seconds, saving you a lot of time.
Create an AI generated component
FlutterFlow's AI Gen feature allows you to generate various elements, including components, from a prompt. This can be particularly useful when you're unsure where to start. Once the component is generated, you can preview it with different color schemes, in both light and dark themes, and make modifications as desired.
Component Properties Panel
When you select a component from the widget tree, the properties panel opens up on the right side of the interface. It plays a crucial role in configuring and managing the various aspects of your components.
Here’s a detailed look at what you can typically find and modify in this panel:
Component Parameters
In FlutterFlow, component parameters are values passed down from a parent entity like a page or another component. These parameters make the component adaptable and dynamic, adjusting to the context in which it is used.
Learn how to add a component to an entity, such as a page or another component, and how to pass parameters.
Actions
This tab allows you to define and manage interactions or events triggered by user actions. For example, you can configure a button to navigate to another page or execute a callback action from the page using the current component.
Adding an action to a component element is exactly the same experience as adding actions to any page elements. Here's a quick overview:
For component actions, you can establish specific behaviors or functions that are triggered by certain events related to the component's lifecycle, such as On Initialization.
To learn more about component lifecycle and adding On Initialization action to your component refer here.
State Management
Components can have their own internal state variables that track information like form inputs, toggles, or other user interactions. Components can update their state in response to user actions (e.g., clicking a button) or external events (e.g., receiving new data from an API).
Effective state management ensures that components dynamically update their UI to reflect changes in state, providing a responsive user experience.
Learn how to Create a State variable for your components and how to Update them.