7 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve Your Flutter Development

The development of Flutter apps will very likely look completely different in the future. The reason is artificial intelligence and, at the forefront, the machine learning model ChatGPT. But what is ChatGPT and how can you use it in your Flutter app development right now? In this blog, I’ll show you.

If you’re interested in seeing this as a video, check out my YouTube video about it.

By the way, this blog was also partially written with ChatGPT.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI tool from OpenAI that helps people have natural conversations and get things done quickly. It’s like a personal assistant that can answer questions and perform tasks, such as translating languages or searching for information on the internet. It’s super fast and can conduct conversations just like a human, making it a great tool for businesses to improve their customer communication and for individuals to get things done easily. I’m already using ChatGPT daily to make my everyday life easier.

Here are 7 ChatGPT applications I use to optimize my Flutter development.

1. Translate Your App

ChatGPT is a highly sophisticated translation model that is capable of translating texts in a variety of languages. It also understands JSON formats and can easily translate them by pasting the content of the JSON file into the input window and specifying the desired translation language. With this functionality, you can have an app translated into multiple languages. A possible disadvantage is that with very long JSON files, ChatGPT can sometimes abort. In such cases, I recommend dividing the list into smaller parts to achieve a better result.

My Input

translate this json file into french
{
  "title": "Was ziehe ich heute an?",
  "language": "Sprache",
  "deleted_item": "{} wurde gelöscht.",
  "settings": "Einstellungen",
  "temperature": "Temperatur",
}

The Output

{
  "title": "¿Qué me pongo hoy?",
  "language": "Idioma",
  "deleted_item": "{} ha sido eliminado.",
  "settings": "Configuraciones",
  "temperature": "Temperatura"
}

2. Inspiration

As an app developer, you can use the chat to generate new ideas for Flutter apps by asking simple questions.

For example, you can ask: “Can you give me some unique ideas for Flutter apps?” or “What kind of Flutter apps are particularly in demand at the moment?” Through interaction with the chat, new perspectives and approaches are unlocked that you might not have considered otherwise.

Another advantage is that it works in real-time and can respond to questions immediately. This allows you to generate new ideas very quickly and build on them.

In my example, I asked the AI what features my weather app should have for them to tell their friends about it. And the result wasn’t bad at all.

My Input

Imagine you are a user of my app. My app is a weather app that suggests
the right clothes for the weather. What feature would you think
of to recommend the app to your friends?

The Output

As a language model, I don't have personal experiences,
but here are some popular features that users often look for
in a weather app:

1. Accurate weather forecasts: This is the most important
feature of a weather app. Users want to know the current
weather conditions and future forecasts with high accuracy.

2. Personalized clothing suggestions: The feature you mentioned,
suggesting the right clothes for the weather, is unique and useful.
It takes into account the temperature and other weather
conditions, and makes personalized clothing recommendations for
the user.

3. User-friendly interface: A weather app with a clean,
intuitive, and easy-to-use interface is more likely to
be recommended by users.

4. Real-time notifications: Many users appreciate real-time
weather alerts and notifications, especially if they are on-the-go
and need to plan their activities accordingly.

5. Multiple locations: The ability to view the weather conditions
in multiple locations, such as their home, work, and travel
destination, is also a useful feature.

6. Detailed weather information: Some users may also be
interested in more detailed weather information, such as wind speed,
humidity, UV index, and air quality.

7. Offline access: The ability to access weather information even
when there is no internet connection can be important for some users.

By incorporating these features, your weather app can offer a
comprehensive and convenient weather experience to your users, making
it a great option for them to recommend to their friends.

Consider ChatGPT as a regular customer who constantly gives you feedback. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that can help you support your creative processes and generate new, unique ideas for Flutter apps.

3. Write Code

If you need to write tedious code again, ChatGPT can also help. Here, however, you should go into more detail and describe exactly what your class or function should do. The better you describe to the AI what you want, the better the result will be.

A nice side effect is also the new approaches that the AI offers. You might, for example, discover new methods to make your code cleaner, or you’ll learn which design pattern makes the most sense for your code.

But be careful: Although the end result may look good, you should always review the code and adjust it if it’s not the desired result.

4. Generate Animations

With animations, it’s similar to code generation: the more details you give the AI about the animation, the better the result. If you don’t yet have an idea of what animations you want to integrate into your app, ChatGPT can make some suggestions about what the Flutter framework has to offer.

In my example, I wanted to generate two animations. A pulsating text animation and a background animation that should behave like waves. The AI did well with the pulsating animation, but the background animation unfortunately didn’t work so well. In such a case, you need to adjust the request or adapt the animation yourself.

5. Correct Code

As a Flutter developer, you’re surely familiar with the problem: You’re working on a project and suddenly an error occurs without you knowing how to fix it. This is where ChatGPT comes in! You can send the chat any type of error message, regardless of whether it’s a syntax error or complex problems. The AI will then send you suggestions or even the completely corrected code.

If you also want to send a code snippet where you suspect the error is occurring, the AI will analyze, correct, and even improve it. This saves you time and effort by allowing you to focus more on your projects and less on debugging.

6. Explain Code

You have no idea what’s going on in your colleague’s function? Or even worse. You’re looking at your own code from 6 months ago and don’t remember what you built. Then have ChatGPT explain it to you.

ChatGPT has really comprehensive knowledge of programming and can explain code snippets to you in easy-to-understand language. In the past, you had to search for hours in documentation and forums, but now you can simply ask ChatGPT and get a summary of your code snippet within seconds.

It can also provide you with the code with explanations in the form of comments, so you can look it up in the future to understand what the function does.

7. Write Tests

With ChatGPT, you have a partner at your side when it comes to writing tests for your Flutter app. Similar to animations, it’s important to describe to ChatGPT exactly what you want. The more precise you are, the better results you’ll achieve.

Here you have the option to generate the tests only through descriptions or also through an example. With examples, the test results also improve, as the chat gets more context and adapts the tests to your example.

A Few Closing Words

As developers, we know that it’s always important to continue learning and master new tools to improve our skills. ChatGPT is one such tool that can help us with development.

However, it’s important to note that ChatGPT is not perfect. It’s possible that some outputs are misunderstood or faulty. Therefore, it’s always advisable to check everything that ChatGPT generates.

The use of AI in development will become increasingly important in the future. Therefore, now is a good opportunity to familiarize yourself with the potential of ChatGPT.

I hope my blog post has helped you understand a bit about how you can use ChatGPT in your Flutter development. Try it out and feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

If you’re a fan of videos, feel free to check out my video here about it. See you next time. Goodbye.