How to dynamically append to the children of a Column widget in Flutter

Question

Flutter is a fairly recent framework and as such not much assistance on simple tasks is available. What I am asking specifically is how do I add Card widgets to a Column widget. Source code is provided below to help to explain what I mean.

Lets say I have a function that creates a new Card as shown below:

buildRow(barcode, letter, name, price) {
  return new Card(
    child: new Column(
      crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.stretch,
      children: <Widget>[
        new ListTile(
          leading: new CircleAvatar(
            child: new Text(letter),
          ),
          title: new Text(name),
          subtitle: new Text("\$" + price),
          trailing: new Text(
            "x1",
            style: new TextStyle(color: Colors.lightBlue),
            textScaleFactor: 1.2,
          ),
        ),
      ],
    ),
  );
}
var snack = buildRow("091918229292", "C", "Crackers", "\$4.00");
var fruit = buildRow("091928229292", "P", "Pomegranate", "\$2.00");
var juice = buildRow("091948229292", "K", "Kiwi Juice", "\$20.00");

And I have the following screen / page:

class Home extends StatefulWidget {
  @override
  HomePage createState() => new HomePage();
}

class HomePage extends State<Home> {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new Column(children: <Widget>[

    ]);
  }
}

Lets say that all the code provided is within the same file. How do I go about adding 'snack', 'fruit' and 'juice' within the children of the Column widget on the Home screen?

Answer 1

This is a basic example if you manually update your source.

      Column(
        children: _createChildren(),
      )

///////

This is the method that creates list of widgets that you feed to your colum

  List<int> someList = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
  List<Widget> _createChildren() {
    return new List<Widget>.generate(someList.length, (int index) {
      return Text(someList[index].toString());
    });
  }

//////

So when you update your list, do it in setState

  void _somethingHappens() {
    setState(() {
      someList.add(6);
    });
  }

Now, If you receive your data from a stream, you can check StreamBuilder, or if it comes from a Future, you can use FutureBuilder.

This example can bo done as well in a regular Builder

Answer 2

Ok I have solved my problem, what I did was create a new list like so:

List<Widget> v = [];

and made this list the children of the body like so:

class HomePage extends State<Home> {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new Column(children: v);
  }
}

After which I created a function to append like so:

buildRow(barcode, letter, name, price) {
  v.add(new Card(
    child: new Column(
      crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.stretch,
      children: <Widget>[
        new ListTile(
          leading: new CircleAvatar(
            child: new Text(letter),
          ),
          title: new Text(name),
          subtitle: new Text("\$" + price),
          trailing: new Text(
            "x1",
            style: new TextStyle(color: Colors.lightBlue),
            textScaleFactor: 1.2,
          ),
        ),
      ], 
    ),
  ));
}

and finally I used the setState function to apply the changes to the screen.