Almost Instagram

A functional clone of Instagram made using Flutter and Appwrite.

Features

• UI identical to Instagram (Pages: Launch, Login, Signup, Feed, Explore, New post, Profile).
• Authentication (Login & Signup).
• Post an image with caption.
• Users can see each others' posts.
• Appwrite is used to authenticate users, upload pictures, and store database of posts.

Screenshots

And no, these screenshots are not of the actual Instagram app lol

Installation

Appwrite

Appwrite backend server is designed to run in a container environment. Running your server is as easy as running one command from your terminal. You can either run Appwrite on your localhost using docker-compose or on any other container orchestration tool like Kubernetes, Docker Swarm or Rancher.

The easiest way to start running your Appwrite server is by running our docker-compose file. Before running the installation command make sure you have Docker installed on your machine:

Unix

docker run -it --rm \
    --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
    --volume "$(pwd)"/appwrite:/usr/src/code/appwrite:rw \
    --entrypoint="install" \
    appwrite/appwrite:1.0.1

Windows

CMD

docker run -it --rm ^
    --volume //var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ^
    --volume "%cd%"/appwrite:/usr/src/code/appwrite:rw ^
    --entrypoint="install" ^
    appwrite/appwrite:1.0.1

PowerShell

docker run -it --rm ,
    --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ,
    --volume ${pwd}/appwrite:/usr/src/code/appwrite:rw ,
    --entrypoint="install" ,
    appwrite/appwrite:1.0.1

Once the Docker installation completes, go to http://localhost to access the Appwrite console from your browser. Please note that on non-linux native hosts, the server might take a few minutes to start after installation completes.

For advanced production and custom installation, check out our Docker environment variables docs. You can also use our public docker-compose.yml file to manually set up and environment.

Flutter

To build and run this project:

1. Get Flutter here if you don't already have it
2. Clone this repository
3. cd into the repo folder
4. Run flutter pub get to get the dependencies
5. Run flutter run-android or flutter run-ios to build the app

(Please note that a Mac with XCode is required to build for iOS)

Setting up appwrite project

We are going to use Appwrite CLI to init the project on appwrite console.

Install Appwrite CLI

The CLI is packaged both as an npm module as well as a standalone binary for your operating system, making it completely dependency free, platform independent and language agnostic.

Install with NPM

If you have npm set up, run the command below to install the CLI

npm install -g appwrite-cli

Install with Script

For a completely dependency-free installation, the CLI also ships with a convenient installation script for your operating system

MacOS

Using Homebrew

brew tap appwrite/sdk-for-cli https://github.com/appwrite/sdk-for-cli
brew update
brew install --HEAD appwrite

or terminal

curl -sL https://appwrite.io/cli/install.sh | bash

Windows

iwr -useb https://appwrite.io/cli/install.ps1 | iex

Linux

curl -sL https://appwrite.io/cli/install.sh | bash

After the installation is complete, verify the install using

appwrite -v

Setup the project using Appwrite CLI

Before you can use the CLI, you need to login to your Appwrite account using

appwrite login

After you're logged in, the CLI needs to be initialized with your Appwrite project. You can initialize the CLI using:

appwrite init project

Choose Create a new Appwrite project and the following prompts will guide you through the setup process, enter almostinstagram as the ID for your new project. The init command also creates an appwrite.json file representing your Appwrite project.

Create a new database

appwrite databases create --databaseId postdatabase --name posts

Create a new collection

appwrite databases createCollection --databaseId postdatabase --collectionId postcollection --name posts --permissions 'read(\"any\")' 'write(\"any\")'

Create username attribute

appwrite databases createStringAttribute --databaseId postdatabase --collectionId postcollection --key username --size 255 --required true

Create caption attribute

appwrite databases createStringAttribute --databaseId postdatabase --collectionId postcollection --key caption --size 255 --required true

Create imageId attribute

appwrite databases createStringAttribute --databaseId postdatabase --collectionId postcollection --key imageId --size 255 --required true

Create a bucket to store post images

appwrite storage createBucket --bucketId imagesbucket --name images --permissions 'read(\"any\")' 'write(\"any\")'

lib/utils/api.dart

You may need to make some changes in lib/utils/api.dart:

url: This is the endpoint URL. If you are testing the app on an android studio emulator and appwrite is configured on localhost, then you don't need to change it. Otherwise, you will need to change the hostname to the URL that you set while initiating appwrite.

Rest of the api.dart should be left as it is.

Register the client on your dashboard

Finally, you need to register the flutter app. On appwrite console (http://localhost), choose this project, then under "Platforms" head, choose "Add Platform", choose "New Flutter App", and add the required information for all the platforms you are going to run the app.

Now your Project is ready to run.

File Structure

.
├── android # android files
├── assets # assets (images)
├── ios # ios files
└── lib
    ├── models # Custom Models
    ├── screens
    │   └── home_tabs # Tabs for home screen
    ├── utils # Api info
    └── widgets # Custom widgets