Customize Your Stepper Widgets in Flutter: Best Practices for Creating Progress Indicators — Flutter

Steppers are an essential component in mobile app development, especially when it comes to forms and multi-step processes. Flutter, being a popular and versatile cross-platform framework, has a built-in stepper widget that makes the development process much more manageable. In this article, we will explore how to use steppers in Flutter and various customization options available to developers.

What is a Stepper ?

A stepper is a widget that allows users to navigate through a set of logical steps. It is used to break down a complicated process into smaller, more manageable steps. Steppers can be used to track the progress of a process, such as creating an account, filling out a form, or placing an order. In Flutter, the Stepper widget provides a built-in way to create such a component.

A material stepper widget that displays progress through a sequence of steps. Steppers are particularly useful in the case of forms where one step requires the completion of another one, or where multiple steps need to be completed in order to submit the whole form. The widget is a flexible wrapper. A parent class should pass currentStep to this widget based on some logic triggered by the three callbacks that it provides.

How to Implement Stepper in Flutter

In this article, we explore the Stepper Widget In Flutter. We will implement a stepper widget demo program and how to use it in your flutter applications.

Create a new project called stepper. Then in file called main.dart inside the lib folder we will create an integer of currentStep. For the stepper widget we will start with the current step at zero.

int _currentStep = 0;

Then we add the widget stepper in the body and inside we need to have the steps arguments which is a list of steps. Inside the list we add method Step(). The step() method defines the display in each step. We define the title and the content. The onStepContinue and onStepCancel properties define what happens when the user clicks on the continue or cancel button.

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

class PageStepper extends StatefulWidget {
  const PageStepper({super.key});

  @override
  State<PageStepper> createState() => _PageStepperState();
}

class _PageStepperState extends State<PageStepper> {
  int _currentStep = 0;
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
        debugShowCheckedModeBanner: false,
        home: Scaffold(
          appBar: AppBar(title: const Text('Stepper Widget')),
          body: Center(
              child: Stepper(
                  currentStep: _currentStep,
                  onStepContinue: () {
                    setState(() {
                      if (_currentStep < 2) {
                        _currentStep += 1;
                      }
                    });
                  },
                  onStepCancel: () {
                    setState(() {
                      if (_currentStep > 0) {
                        _currentStep -= 1;
                      }
                    });
                  },
                  steps: const [
                Step(
                  title: Text('Step 1'),
                  content: Text('Content of step 1.'),
                ),
                Step(
                  title: Text('Step 2'),
                  content: Text('Content of step 2.'),
                ),
                Step(
                  title: Text('Step 3'),
                  content: Text('Content of step 3.'),
                )
              ])),
        ));
  }
}

Customizing the Stepper Widget

Flutter provides various customization options for the Stepper widget. Here are some of the most commonly used ones :

• Changing the Color Scheme

The Stepper widget’s color scheme can be changed by setting the colorScheme property. For example, you can set the primary color to red and the background color to blue as follows :

Stepper(
  colorScheme: ColorScheme(
    primary: Colors.red,
    background: Colors.blue,
  ),
  ...
)

• Changing the Icon

The Stepper widget’s icon can be changed by setting the icon property. For example, you can set a custom icon by using the Icon widget :

Stepper(
  icon: Icon(Icons.person),
  ...
)

• Changing the Title Style

The Stepper widget’s title style can be changed by setting the titleStyle property. For example, you can change the font size and color of the title as follows :

Stepper(
  titleStyle: TextStyle(
    fontSize: 18,
    color: Colors.black,
  ),
  ...
)

• Changing the Border

The Stepper widget’s border can be changed by setting the borderRadius and borderWidth properties. For example, you can set a rounded border with a width of 2 as follows :

Stepper(
  borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(20),
  borderWidth: 2,
  ...
)

• Customize the button Text

The text on the continue and cancel buttons can be changed by setting the continueButtonLabel and cancelButtonLabel properties. For example :

Stepper(
  continueButtonLabel: Text('Next'),
  cancelButtonLabel: Text('Back'),
  ...
)

• Changing the Progress Color

The color of the progress indicator can be changed by setting the activeColor property. For example, you can set the progress color to green as follows :

Stepper(
  activeColor: Colors.green,
  ...
)

• Disabling the Progress Indicator

If you don’t want to display the progress indicator, you can set the controlsBuilder property to null.

Stepper(
  controlsBuilder: null,
  ...
)

Conclusion

Steppers are an essential component in mobile app development, and Flutter provides a built-in way to create them. In this article, we explored how to use steppers in Flutter and various customization options available to developers. By leveraging these customization options, developers can create Stepper widgets that blend seamlessly with the rest of their app’s design.

If I got something wrong? Let me know in the comments. I would love to improve.

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