Introducing the Dart and Flutter SDK for PubNub

In our continuous quest to deliver a world-class developer experience, we’re pleased to introduce our new PubNub Dart SDK. To get started, you can also check out this example application that leverages both Flutter and Dart.

Our developers have been wanting to use the Flutter Framework on PubNub to simplify the creation of natively-compiled applications for mobile devices, web and desktop from a single codebase. Creating apps quickly on multiple platforms is important in today’s always-on world, and we strive to give our developers the latest and greatest. Using Flutter is not specific to Dart, nor is using the Flutter Framework required for using the PubNub Dart SDK. But, the SDK provides developers with an array of options for producing multi-platform applications.

Enabling Multi-Platform Development using Dart and Flutter

One of the biggest challenges we’ve found our customers want to solve is the ability to produce client-optimized applications on multiple platforms. Incidentally, this is one of the main reasons that companies are choosing to write their applications in Dart. In combination with the Flutter Framework, Dart allows companies to scale quickly across platforms without having to produce and maintain a different team for each one.

In the past 6 months, there have been a lot of PubNub developers that have made requests specifically for Flutter usage. For us, this ultimately came down to supporting Dart itself. In order to provide solutions for developers with as many of the major technologies as possible, the logical conclusion was to provide a PubNub native Dart SDK.

A Better Developer Experience with Dart and Flutter

Developers using the new Dart SDK will be able to take advantage of the Dart programming language and leverage the Flutter Framework to quickly produce quick, client-optimized applications on multiple platforms with a single codebase. Whether it’s building a fast proof-of-concept, or developing a scalable real-time production application for users on any platform, the combination of the PubNub Dart SDK and the Flutter Framework opens up a world of possibilities.

Having a single codebase for a multi-platform application is especially important for those that don’t necessarily have the expertise for all their target platforms, and for those that love to keep life simple and manage a single codebase. With a single codebase, features remain consistent across platforms. Instead of bringing platform versions up to parity, you can focus on adding new and exciting core features for your users.

Of course, because Dart is a programming language, it is not required that you use Flutter in order to reap the benefits the Dart SDK offers. Rest assured, the SDK can be used in a pure Dart application with the same benefits of creating applications for multiple platforms. Developers who go this route will simply handle the UI portions manually, without any assistance from a Framework like Flutter.

Finally, we'd like to extend a special thanks to all of the developers who love using PubNub enough to request support for Dart and Flutter. Thanks to you, the whole community now has a new way to use PubNub to build scalable real-time applications for their users on any platform, easily.