There is a specific feeling you get when a massive piece of work finally comes together. It’s a mix of exhaustion, relief, and extreme excitement. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working tirelessly on the next major iteration of our state management library, and today, we are officially releasing Flutter Current 3.0.0.
This release represents a massive leap forward. In fact, it includes the most feature additions, fixes, and nice-to-haves since the original library launched nearly four years ago. We took everything we’ve learned from building production applications and poured it into making Flutter Current more powerful, more intuitive, and completely boilerplate-averse.
Here is a look at what makes 3.0.0 so special.
True Two-Way Text Binding & Locale-Agnostic Validation
One of the most requested features has been a simpler way to handle text input and form validation. We love the “bind it and forget it” mentality, so we built the CurrentTextController.
This new controller handles seamless two-way binding between your text fields and your CurrentProperty values. To make this even easier, we’ve included specialized widgets out of the box: CurrentTextFormField and CurrentTextField. No more manually updating properties in an onChanged callback or juggling standard TextEditingController listeners. Just point it at your property and let Flutter Current handle the sync.
But we didn’t stop at binding text—we tied our brand new validation system directly into this controller.
Traditionally, validation functions return a String if there’s an error, and null if it’s valid. Hardcoding error strings into your business logic is a recipe for a localization nightmare when your app needs to support multiple languages.
In 3.0.0, we’ve introduced a new issue-based validation system that works hand-in-hand with CurrentTextController. Instead of returning strings, validation rules now return a CurrentValidationIssue. The text controller automatically picks up these issues and communicates them directly to your CurrentTextFormField.
This keeps your business logic completely locale-agnostic. Your ViewModel simply reports what went wrong, and your UI layer decides how to communicate that to the user based on their current locale.
We’ve also added the CurrentTextControllersLifecycleMixin to help automatically manage the disposal of these controllers within your widget state, keeping your memory footprint clean.
Smarter State, Less Boilerplate
We’ve also made significant under-the-hood improvements to how state is tracked and shared across your application:
- Getting Started Burden Erased: You no longer have to pass a magical String value to your root
Currentcomponent if you wanted to have app-level state. Nor do you have to pass anonAppStateChangedcallback to handle state changes. Funny how we made you tell the state management library when your app state changed…weird. Now all you need is a CurrentViewModel and your Material or Cupertino app. Done. - Smarter Dirty Tracking:
CurrentListPropertyandCurrentMapPropertynow compare their contents rather than relying on reference identity. Your UI will only rebuild when the actual data inside your collections changes. Also hardened the equality checks for allCurrentPropertytypes to prevent unnecessary rebuilds and ensure your UI is as efficient as possible. And now you can check if ANY property has changed by checking theisDirtyfield on your ViewModel. There is anisDirtyfield on each individual CurrentProperty as well if you want to check specific properties. - Undo/Reset That Really Works!: Significant changes to the lifecycle semantics of CurrentProperty and CurrentViewModel have made the
reseton properties and theresetAllon ViewModels much more robust. Previously, they worked 97.2% of the time, but there were edge cases where callingresetwould result in you staring at your screen and contemplating your life choices. Now, you can confidently callreseton any property orresetAllon any ViewModel, and it will reliably revert to the initial state. - Smarter Streams: You can now subscribe to specific Current change events without that awkward dance you had to do trying to match events to property names. This makes it easier, more efficient, and allows you to clearly express your intent when listening to state changes. Oh, this goes for
ErrorEventsstream too! Phew. - CurrentWidget and CurrentViewModel Lifecycle Improvements: Since…well forever, if you tried to reassign a ViewModel to another CurrentWidget, you would be kindly greeted with the most heinous of errors. This was extra difficult to deal with if you wanted to use CurrentWidgets in a TabView. NO MORE! Reassigning a ViewModel is now a first-class operation. You can say you’re smarter than the library (SMRT) and take full control by passing
disposeViewModel: falseto your CurrentWidget, or you could also apply the built-in FlutterAutomaticKeepAliveClientMixinto your CurrentState and BOOM, things work like you’ve wanted them to work since day one. I’m sorry, and you’re welcome. - A Metric Fun-Ton of QoL Improvements: Easier CurrentProperty initializations? You got it (
CurrentProperty.string(), anyone?). Updating CurrentProperty values like a normal variable…you know the way we said you should be able to do it since day one but then chose to make you call ansetmethod instead? Yeah, fixed that too. Now you can FINALLY writedescription.value = 'Shep is awesome'instead ofdescription.set('Shep is just not cool'). We didn’t take thesetmethod away as it’s still useful in function tear-offs. This also allows you to interact with the underlying value in a more natural way. For example, you can now do things likeage.value++orage.value += 5.
Supercharging VS Code: Snippets 2.0.0
A great library is only as good as the developer experience surrounding it. That’s why, alongside the 3.0.0 package release, we are launching Version 2.0.0 of the Flutter Current VS Code Extension.
This isn’t just a minor update to the snippets; it is a massive workflow enhancement integrated directly into your editor:
- Command Palette & Context Menus: You can now generate completely scaffolded
CurrentWidgetandCurrentViewModelfile pairs with a single click or command. - Intelligent Quick Fixes: Need to convert an existing
StatelessWidgetorStatefulWidgetto aCurrentWidget? There’s a Quick Fix for that. Forgot to add a property to yourcurrentPropsgetter? There’s a Quick Fix for that too. - Refreshed Snippets: The classic
currentvmandcurrentwidgetsnippets have been updated to support the new 3.0.0 APIs flawlessly.
Why did I decide to do all this?
After emerging from my office WAY past my bedtime for the last few weeks I had a fun interaction with my wife one morning. It went something like this:
Jessica: “How are you getting paid for all this extra work?”.
Me: “Wow, do you look beautiful today! Did you do something new with your hair?”.
Truly the answer is simple: I love what I do.
This library is nowhere near as popular as some of the other state management solutions out there. And that’s ok. Flutter Empire, and now Flutter Current, have always been labors of love. It’s been battle-tested in many production applications, very large ones at that. And maybe I am slightly biased, but I actually think it’s pretty awesome to use.
But if you’d like to save me from having to use my charm and self-proclaimed good looks to avoid having to answer that question again, you can always deliver a dump truck of pennies to my house. Just make sure to call ahead so I can clear some space in the driveway.
Join Us in the Current
This release is the culmination of years of learning, refining, and building. If you are an existing user, we highly encourage you to review the changelog and migrate.
If you are new to Flutter Current, we invite you to give it a try. We are committed to making Flutter state management as frictionless as possible. Grab the package on pub.dev and install the brand new 2.0.0 VS Code extension to see how not having to worry about state management really feels.
As always, suggestions and contributions are welcome. We can’t wait to see what you build!
