show/hide a widget without recreating it

Question

Let's say I have 2 cards and one is shown on screen at a time. I have a button that replaces the current card with other cards. Now assume that there is some data on card 1 and some data on card 2 and I don't want to destroy the data on each of them or I don't want to rebuild any of them again.

I tried using Stack Widget and overlapping one on top of others with a boolean on the top card. The value of this boolean is reversed by calling setstate when the button is pressed. The issue is as soon as I press the button, the new card rebuilds all over again and then shown or initState is called again, which I don't want. Any Solution?

EDIT: Sample Code:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() => runApp(new MyApp());

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  // This widget is the root of your application.
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Demo',
      theme: new ThemeData(
        primarySwatch: Colors.blue,
      ),
      home: new MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'),
    );
  }
}

class MyHomePage extends StatefulWidget {
  MyHomePage({Key key, this.title}) : super(key: key);
  final String title;

  @override
  _MyHomePageState createState() => new _MyHomePageState();
}

class _MyHomePageState extends State<MyHomePage> {
  var toggleFlag = false;

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new Scaffold(
      appBar: new AppBar(
        title: new Text(widget.title),
      ),
      body: new Center(
        child: toggleFlag
            ? CustomWidget(color: Colors.blue)
            : CustomWidget(color: Colors.red),
      ),
      floatingActionButton: new FloatingActionButton(
        onPressed: _toggleCard,
        tooltip: 'Increment',
        child: new Icon(Icons.add),
      ), // This trailing comma makes auto-formatting nicer for build methods.
    );
  }

  void _toggleCard() {
    setState(() {
      toggleFlag = !toggleFlag;
    });
  }
}

class CustomWidget extends StatefulWidget {
  var color;

  CustomWidget({this.color});

  @override
  State<StatefulWidget> createState() {
    return new MyState();
  }
}

class MyState extends State<CustomWidget> {
  @override   //I don't want this to be called again and again
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {  
    return new Container(
      height: 100.0,  
      width: 100.0,
      color: widget.color,
    );
  }
}

Answer 1

1-Solution: You have an array of widgets like this

  final widgetList[widget1(), widget2()]
  int currentIndex = 0;

  IndexedStack (
    index: currentIndex,
    children: widgetList,
   ));

2-Solution:

With the Stack widget

  int currentIndex = 0;

Stack(
   children: [
   Offstage(
    offstage: currentIndex != 0,
    child: bodyList[0],
   ),
   Offstage(
    offstage: currentIndex != 1,
    child: bodyList[1],
   ),
   Offstage(
    offstage: currentIndex != 2,
    child: bodyList[2],
   ),
   ],
  )

3-Solution: You need to add this to your stateful widget state

AutomaticKeepAliveClientMixin <Widgetname> like this

   class _WidgetState extends State <Widgetname> with AutomaticKeepAliveClientMixin     <Widgetname> {
   @override
      bool get wantKeepAlive => true;
   }