flutter-best-practices

Flutter Best Practices

Standards for building maintainable Flutter apps, distilled from the official

Flutter architecture guide and LeanCode's experience shipping 40+ Flutter

projects (including a 30-developer banking app). Apply these when writing new

code; when touching existing code, prefer consistency with the surrounding

codebase and raise conflicts with these standards rather than silently

rewriting.

How to use this skill

Read the reference file that matches the task. Read more than one when tasks

overlap (e.g. a new feature touches both structure and coding style).

| Task | Read |

|---|---|

| Design layers, decide where logic lives, MVVM, repositories/services | [references/architecture-layers.md](references/architecture-layers.md) |

| Create/organize a feature, folder structure, state management wiring | [references/feature-structure.md](references/feature-structure.md) |

| Write or review Dart/Flutter code, widgets, tests, lints | [references/dart-coding-practices.md](references/dart-coding-practices.md) |

| Multi-team/multi-package apps, monorepo, navigation, localization, API contracts, E2E tests | [references/enterprise-scale.md](references/enterprise-scale.md) |

| App localization setup, reusable UI package string ownership, language picker visibility | [references/localization-package-boundaries.md](references/localization-package-boundaries.md) |

For a quick task (small widget fix, one-line review comment), the core rules

below may be enough on their own.

Core rules (always apply)

Architecture

1. Separate UI from data. Two broad layers: UI (views + view models /

cubits) and Data (repositories + services). Dependencies point one way:

View → ViewModel → Repository → Service. Lower layers never import upper

layers. Repositories never depend on each other.

1. Views hold no business logic. Widgets may contain show/hide

conditionals, animation, layout, and simple routing logic — nothing that

transforms or decides about data. All data logic lives in the view model

(or cubit/bloc), which has no access to BuildContext.

1. Organize by feature, not by layer. Everything a feature needs — state

management, widgets, models — lives under one feature directory. Don't

create top-level blocs/, widgets/, models/ buckets that scatter a

feature across the tree.

1. State is immutable and explicit. Model UI state as a sealed/union type

(initial / inProgress / failure / ready) so every case is handled

exhaustively. One-off effects (snackbars, navigation) are events, not

state.

1. Add layers only when they pay for themselves. Start with

view-model → API client. Introduce a repository when you need caching,

offline, or merging sources. Introduce a use case only when logic merges

multiple repositories, is genuinely complex, or is reused by several view

models.

Coding

1. Prefer intent-revealing widgets over Container. Use Padding,

SizedBox, ColoredBox, DecoratedBox, Center — they are const-able

and self-describing. Container is fine only when combining several

properties at once.

1. Use modern Dart. Pattern matching (if (x case final v?)), switch

expressions with exhaustiveness, records and destructuring, collection

if/for/spreads instead of .add() loops, expression bodies for

pass-through async functions (no redundant async/await).

1. Prefix sliver-returning widgets with Sliver so misuse in the wrong

scroll context is caught at a glance.

1. Tests tell a story. Use expressive matchers (isEmpty, throwsA,

isA, completion) and minimize dependencies — plain Text/SizedBox

over design-system widgets in test fixtures. Test cubits/view models in

isolation from the widget tree.

1. Every // ignore: gets a reason on the same or preceding line. Log

errors with dedicated error/stackTrace parameters, never string

interpolation.

Workflow checklists

Adding a new feature/screen

1. Read [references/feature-structure.md](references/feature-structure.md)

and mirror the existing project's conventions for the feature directory.

1. Define the state as a union type first; then the cubit/view model; then

the widgets. Constructor-inject dependencies; scope them to the feature's

widget subtree.

1. Data comes in through a repository or typed API client — never fetched

inside a widget.

1. Add unit tests for the cubit/view model logic before wiring UI details.

Reviewing Flutter code

Check, in order of importance:

1. Logic in the right layer (rule 1–2)? Any BuildContext in business logic?
2. State modeled as immutable union types, all cases handled?
3. Feature self-contained, or does it reach into another feature's internals?
4. Widget choices (rule 6), modern Dart (rule 7), sliver naming (rule 8)?
5. Tests present for logic, readable, minimal dependencies?
6. Unexplained // ignore:, string-interpolated error logs, deprecated

patterns still spreading?

Starting a new project

1. Read [references/architecture-layers.md](references/architecture-layers.md)

for the layer blueprint and

[references/feature-structure.md](references/feature-structure.md) for the

folder skeleton.

1. If more than ~2 teams or clearly separable domains are involved, read

[references/enterprise-scale.md](references/enterprise-scale.md) and

consider a Melos monorepo with one package per domain from day one.

1. Set up strict lints early (leancode_lint or equivalent + custom rules) —

retrofitting is far more expensive.

Package palette

Defaults that these standards assume (swap for project-local equivalents when

the codebase already uses something else):

• State: bloc (Cubit) + freezed for union-type states;

bloc_presentation for one-off UI events

• DI: provider scoped to widget subtrees (accepting its lack of

compile-time safety as the lesser evil)

• Boilerplate reduction: flutter_hooks
• Monorepo: melos
• Localization: flutter_localizations + intl with .arb files
• Lints: leancode_lint
• E2E/UI tests: patrol

The official Flutter guide is state-management-agnostic (MVVM with

ChangeNotifier works too); what matters is the layer separation, not the

package. See the reference files for rationale and trade-offs.