Working with Sockets in Flutter

Kshitiz Sharma
Written by

Kshitiz Sharma

Kshitiz Sharma

Kshitiz Sharma

Technical Writer

A mobile app developer on a relentless quest for excellence, fueled by a passion for innovation. I am a dedicated explorer in the world of code, always pushing the limits, and love creating apps that work wonders.

Quick Summary: Dive into the world of real-time communication in Flutter as we explore the intricacies of working with sockets. This article serves as your guide to seamlessly integrate socket programming into your Flutter applications, unlocking the power of instant data exchange and interactive user experiences.

Introduction

Mobile applications often need to communicate with servers or other devices in real-time. One way to achieve this is through sockets. Sockets provide a bidirectional communication channel between a client and a server, enabling efficient data exchange. Flutter, a popular UI toolkit for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase, provides support for working with sockets.

Socket Basics

Sockets can be classified into two types: **TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)** and **UDP (User Datagram Protocol)**. TCP provides reliable, connection-oriented communication, while UDP offers simpler, connectionless communication. For most real-time applications, TCP is the preferred choice.