Features

Chainmail offers a mixin based extension model to improve code quality. You might already know mixins and their advantages from the infamous TickerProvider mixins.

The package ships with following features already implemented:

• Extensible mixin based chain model
• Full integrations with the default state class
• Blocs: Bind to list of blocs and listen to updated
• Loading: Await a future and show a placeholder
• Errors: Catch custom or loading errors and show them
• Responsive: Implement orientation specific build methods
• Disposables: Register StreamSubscriptions and dispose callbacks
• LateRender: Wait for one frame before building to access the RenderBox

Usage

To use chainmail extensions, just change your state implementations type to ChainmailState and implement the mainBuild method instead of build.

class ExampleWidget extends StatefulWidget {
  const ExampleWidget({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  State<ExampleWidget> createState() => ExampleState();
}

class ExampleState extends ChainmailState<ExampleWidget> {
  @override
  Widget mainBuild() => const Text("Hello World");
}

You can use the BuildContext as usual with the context variable, which in this case is declared at class level and is accessible from everywhere inside the class and always up-to-date. You can also use one of the numerous quality of life getters for common scenarios, like getting MediaQueries or accessing the nearest Theme and TextTheme.

To use an extension (from now on referred to as chainlinks), just use the with keyword followed by the mixin class. You then possibly have to implement required methods.

class ExampleState extends ChainmailState<ExampleWidget> with Loading {
  @override
  Widget mainBuild() => const Text("Test!");
  
  @override
  Future initialize() async {
    await Future.delayed(const Duration(seconds: 1));
  }
}

The chainlinks will be applied in natural order, contrary to the "common" reverse order, because of readability.