Flutter Video Chat App

Previouly we built a flutter chatting app mostly text and image based. This time we will build a new chatting app using flutter framework. This will include some cool features which covers both video and voice calling along with text and image sending as well as emoji.

Another main feature of this app is that, you can send notification both for audio and video calling. If someone called you you will get notification and the other person will have to wait until you receive it. Both end will have calling sound. It's a custom sound.

This chat app is also included here in this study app source code.

Cool features of the app

• 1. video chat
  2. voice chat
  3. text chat
  4. sending images 
  5. sending stickers
  6. save chat in the local database
  7. sync local database with remote database
  8. both laravel and firebase backend
  9. notification is send first as you do video
  10. notification number and icons based on your chat message number
  11. notification is received even if the app is killed
  12. user need to tap on the button to accept the video call
  13. notification is send first as you do voice call
  14. there's sound on the other side as you call
  15. caller also can hear the sound 
  16. every text message has notification
  17. call ends automitically as you hang up the call
  18. phone number message verification
  19. show call time
  20. show call duration
  21. clear message when you open message screen
  22. multi line mesagge box as you type more
  23. auto hide of message box as you are done
  24. audio video controller (buttons)

App UI

Get the complete app from here

Buymecoffee link

Patreon link

Download the apk video chat

Starter code

Some features, we were not able to record sound in the screen recording of iOS device.

Technology used in this app

1. Flutter framework
2. Firebase service
3. Agora SDK
4. Laravel framework

The whole architecture is based on Flutter framework. We used Firebase service for chatting and storing user chat information including texts and images. 

We used Agora SDK for video chat and voice chat.

We used Laravel Framework for basic backend service and where you can video basic user data.

App Deployment Locally

1. create a new flutter project
2. copy all the files and folers like lib, assets and pubspec.yaml from the downloaded project in your new project
3. make sure you create a firebase project with above project from terminal
4. you need to make sure you connect this app with your own firebase project
5. make sure you generate SHA1 and SHA256 key with your project
6. create an account with Agora video sdk
7. install the laravel application
8. make sure that you have SSL with your domain
9. make sure you replace the App ID and App Certificate

App and Laravel

Agora Laravel and Firebase Integration

Laravel Backend

The backend is mostly used for to know how many users do you have and who they are. You may also maintain them from there.

Backend installation requirement

1. prepare a domain
2. have it with SSL
3. PHP verion 7.4 or higher
4. MySQL version 5.7 or higher

Notification

See how notification works. It should be coming from your app to your server to your firebase account to your user. For this reason we have integrated Firebase Admin SDK with PHP.

Why use third party SDK

The reason why we use third party SDK to do it, because Flutter does not provide any higher level API to connect with video technology like WebRTC.

If a small team or some students try to do it, it would be almost very difficult to get the job done. Even if they do it, the video signal would be very bad and shaky. Apart from them they have to build up their own server to send the video signals to different users in different country.

They also need to spend thousands of dollars for building servers and decoding the signal.

Third party SDK solves these problems since they are dedicated to do it and they have a very big team to get the job done. 

In this app, the way used it here is an example. It requires PHP and Agora integration.

UI Concepts

Some concepts used in this app, which are difficult for beginners. These concepts are must for building any kind of complex app. Apart from this app, I have used them in other two apps as well. Let's take a look who they are

1. CustomScrollView
2. ScrollController
3. addPostFrameCallback

If you just wanna know about them, click on the links and learn on your own free time.

Issues

You can not have a Facebook login (only developers account) if you don't publish the app in the Google play and iOS store.

Simply speaking Facebook login requires app publishing

Change Log

10. 08-22-2023 update to latest flutter sdk

9. 01-08-2023 multi line message box as you chat

8. 01-07-2023 time during bug fix

7. 01-06-2023 phone number verifciation

6. 01-06-2023 app receives notification even if it's killed

5. 01-06-2023 show notification number as red dots

4. 01-05-2023 update time showing during video and voice call

3. 01-04-2023 update loading icon

2. 01-03-2023 update routing

1. 01-03-2023 online

.......coming more....