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Coding Guidelines for Dart
Coding Guidelines for Dart

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High quality code with good style is not only essential for a developer, but also makes it easier to maintain the software. If you make stable software with good style, then your system will be able to demonstrate high performance.

In this blog, we are going to share a few conventions for naming and ordering packages, classes, methods and variables which are in line with best practices.

1. Naming Guidelines

Let us discuss naming, ordering, and formatting code. Before getting into the particulars, it is a good practice to write code in such a way that it should be self-explanatory. The variables and functions should be named based on the operations they are assigned for.

  • Packages
    Packages and source files should be named using lowercase letters with an underscore. For example, a ‘test driver’ package should be named ‘test_driver’ while a package for ‘dependency injection’ should be named dependency_injection.
  • Classes
    Classes, enums, and parameters should be named using ‘Upper Camel Case’ letters with no underscore and where only the first letter of the word is capitalized. For example:

class AuthViewModel {…}enum AuthStatus {success,failed,error}

Also, the filename should be lowercase with an underscore. For example: auth_view_model.dart

  • Methods & Variables
    Similar to classes, methods and variables should also be named in camel case, but in Lower Camel Case. For example:

var userProfile;AuthNotification authNotification;void loadUserProfile() {//TODO: write your code}

2. Ordering Guidelines

Ordering of every section is very important for differentiating the method, variable and property. Every section should be in order, and separated by an empty line.

Ordering guidelines for different class components are as follows:

  • Order of class property

public class myClass{#region Private Members#endregion#region Public Properties#endregion#region Constructors#endregion#region Public Methods#endregion}

  • Order of imports/export sections

A> “dart:” imports must come before other imports.

import ‘dart:async’;
import ‘dart:html’;
import ‘package:model/UserModel.dart’;
import ‘package:network/HttpRequest.dart’

B> “export:” should be after other imports.

import ‘package:dltwallet/src/appflow/app_coordinator.dart’;
import ‘package:dltwallet/src/appflow/main_flow/main_tab.dart’;
import ‘package:dltwallet/src/appflow/splash_screen.dart’;
export ‘package:async/src/error.dart’;

3. Formatting Guidelines

Formatting rules or guidelines are used when writing source code in Dart language. If programmers use good style for writing source code, it will improve source code readability and understandability, and conform to a standard style. This can help avoid introducing errors in the code.

  • Format code using ‘dartfmt’
    Code Formatting is uninteresting and particularly time-consuming during refactoring. But we need not worry about it. Dart provides an advanced automated code formatter called dartfmt that does the job for you. Using dartfmt, you can remove the official whitespace.
  • Make your code more formatter-friendly
    Usage of long identifiers, deeply nested expressions, a mixture of different kinds of operators, etc. makes it difficult to read (or understand) code even after formatting. Code structure and naming should be as simple as possible.
  • Use 80 characters in a line
    If you would like the code to be read in the format of a paragraph or an essay, you need to write maximum of 80 characters in a line. Otherwise your code is likely to be too wordy or could be a harder to read.

Methods shouldn’t have more than an average of 30 code lines, excluding line spaces and comments.

4. Practice Coding

We can learn and practice programming by following a few rules, as mentioned below:

  • Use const keyword: Dart 2 introduced optional parameters for constructors. The const keyword is also optional where it can be understood by the compiler.
    There are different ways that a const keyword can be used as shown below:
    A>A const collection literal.
    B>A const constructor call.
    C>As a metadata annotation.
    D>As an initializer for a variable declaration.

Let us understand the const keyword using these three examples:

final function = Function();
const function2 = Function();
const function3 = const <Widget>[Widget1(), Widget2()];

  • Return ‘Widget’
    We can return Widget instead of Flutter Widget. As your project evolves, you may change the widget type that is returned by your function. Let us take an example: you may prefer to wrap your widget with Center().
    By returning a widget, refactoring is simplified, since the method signature does not change.
    For Example:

Widget returnContainerWidget() {
return Center(child: Container());
}

  • Boolean
    We can use the null check operator ‘??’ to convert null to a boolean value. We must convert the null value to either true or false.
    Although you could do this using ‘==’, using the ‘??’ operator instead is easier to use, and reduces lines of code used.
    For example:

userProfile?.isEnabled ?? false;

  • Use ‘=>’ function expression
    You can use ‘=>’ for simple members like calculate and return value.If you are using more than one line or your code has nested expressions, then you can use a block body and a few statements.For example:

double get driveTime(double startTime, double endTime) ‘=>’ endTime-startTime;

  • Use async/await
    For raw future functions, use aync/await. Any function you want to run asynchronously must have the async modifier added to it. When you are adding the await modifier, the code is explicitly saying: “don’t go further until my future is completed”.
    For example:

function () async {var data = await loadData();// Do something…}

Thank you for reading!

Author — Pradeep Kumar, DLT Labs

About the Author: Pradeep is a software development professional who has experience creating apps for multiple platforms.

For Reference:

https://dart.dev/guides/language/effective-dart

 


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