Flutter and Phoenix channels

[th0mas]

Flutter/Dart currently only has one Phoenix client library so we have two approaches to integrate Flutter and Phoenix:

• Use the existing library: https://github.com/mfeckie/phoenix_wings
  This is probably the easiest option, but we will run into some bugs/edge cases, such as heartbeat acks that aren't
  implemented by this library so we may have to make changes anyway.

• Run our own on top of Darts web_socket_channel
  phoenix.js clocs in at around 800 lines of OO JavaScript code, so it wouldn't be a huge task to port this over to dart.
  This would provide us with a consistent API with the official library. I'm happy to do this as a "learn dart" exercise

[nelsonic]

@th0mas see how far you can get with phoenix_wings and leave comments on this issue with your progress.
If you hit a brick wall, please open an issue on https://github.com/mfeckie/phoenix_wings/issues and link to it from here.
Groking the source will be informative if you decide to re-implement it.

[th0mas]

phoenix_wings should work well. I can't see any large feature difference between that and the reference phoenix.js implementation. If we do find one, I'm sure it will be easily patched.

[nelsonic]

Crucially we need to have a library that knows to avoid attempting to reconnect when the devices is offline
and automatically reconnects when there is a connection, so it may need to be aware of connection status #3.
Also, having a heartbeat could be useful for presence mfeckie/phoenix_wings#10 as we want to know "Who's Online?"

[th0mas]

This library does seem to have Presence support (https://pub.dev/documentation/phoenix_wings/latest/html/PhoenixPresence-class.html) so that shouldn't be a problem.

I'll check for online/offline callbacks.

[SimonLab]

Just had a look at the phoenix_wings repository, the last updated was a while ago now:

With the newest version of Phoenix I'm not sure if this library is still compatible.

[nelsonic]

@SimonLab yeah, the top result when searching for google.com/search?q=flutter+phoenix+channels
Is no longer phoenix_wings ...

It's phoenix_socket: https://pub.dev/packages/phoenix_socket

Which has recent activity/contribution: https://github.com/braverhealth/phoenix-socket-dart

It has a "corporate sponsor" in the form of: https://braver.net/en/

And the lead dev @matehat seems to know what he's doing. 👌

This is the approach/route I would take. 💭

[nelsonic]

Quick issue https://github.com/braverhealth/phoenix-socket-dart/issues/
and PR to test braverhealth/phoenix-socket-dart#57 receptiveness to future contributions. 😉

[nelsonic]

GOTO: dwyl/flutter-phoenix-channels-demo#1

[nesimtunc]

Is there any issue? I wonder if anyone using it in production one of those libraries?