What is the difference between Scaffold and Container in Flutter?

Question

I know both Scaffold and Container are parent widgets in Flutter, but when should I use a Scaffold and when should I use a Container to layout my child widget?

Answer 1

Scaffold and container serve different purposes for layout and design.

Scaffold

• Implements the basic material design visual layout structure.
• This class provides APIs for showing drawers, snack bars, and bottom sheets.

Link - Scaffold

Container

• A convenience widget that combines common painting, positioning, and sizing widgets.
• It basically contains different widget into one widget over which you can give padding , size , position etc.

Link -Container

Conclusion

You need Scaffold widget as main parent of your page where you use container for smaller widget into page to give them different properties like size, border, padding, margin etc.

Answer 2

I would recommend you should understand MaterialApp Widget for a better understanding of Material Widgets like Scaffold and Container.

Scaffold:

The scaffold is the MaterialApp Widget which gives us pre-defined properties like AppBar, Body, Bottom Navigation, Floating Action & Persistent Footer. The scaffold will give Material look and feel in Screen.

Ideally, in MaterialApp every page/Screen will consist of the parent widget as a scaffold. If we don't give Scaffold as a parent widget there will be no material look and feel in Material App.

Helpful link for Scaffold Widget:

Scaffold Class: https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/material/Scaffold-class.html

App Samples: https://flutter.dev/docs/catalog/samples/Scaffold

Container:

The container is a basic/common widget in Flutter which will contain other widgets. Container widget used for decorating its child widget. we can give properties like borders, padding, alignment, height, width, etc. The container class will only contain one child widget.

Helpful link for Container Widget:

Container Class: https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/widgets/Container-class.html

Answer 3

Scaffold is like a parent widget or just consider a whole where you would have different properties like appbar,body all those type widgets are child widget scaffold gives better look to app where only using container is much uglier

Scaffold:

The scaffold has AppBar, Body, Bottom Navigation, Floating Action & Persistent Footer. The scaffold will give Material look and feel in Screen.

Container:

The container is a basic/common widget in Flutter which will contain other widgets. we can give padding , size , position etc.