How to Build a Flutter Video Chat App with MirrorFly?

Krishi Shivasangaran Published On April 22nd, 2024 Tech Talks

“Flutter is the most popular cross-platform mobile framework used by global developers, according to a 2022 developer survey. Based on the survey, 46 percent of software developers used Flutter.”

Developing video chat apps dominates the communication industry, boosting user engagement, retention, and satisfaction. You can either build a video chat app from scratch or integrate Flutter video SDKs s from various providers. In this article, we can get an overview of how to build a Flutter video call app, its unique features, and the hassle-free integration of video calling APIs.

Why Do You Need Flutter As A Developer?

As a developer, there are several reasons why you need to choose Flutter for building your video chat app or video call app.

Here are a few major reasons listed below:

• Cross-platform Development: The primary reason for a developer to choose Flutter is cross-platform development, where you can write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms like Android, iOS, web, desktop, etc. It saves you development time.

• Single Codebase: It’s easy to maintain and streamline the development process due to the single codebase on Flutter. You can develop apps on multiple platforms without the need for separate code caches, which helps you streamline your development process.

• Fast Development: Flutter facilitates a hot-reload feature, which helps you see the changes you make in code reflected in the user interface (UI) or user experience (UX) instantly. This can make a huge difference in the speed of the development process without leaving room for hesitation.

• Growing Community and Ecosystem: Flutter has gained a vast amount of popularity, and developers love it for simplifying their development process. It simply means that you have a wide range of communities to seek a wealth of resources, libraries, or common problems.

• Cost-effective: Flutter facilitates single-codebase cross-platform app development, which helps you cut down on costs in a more effective manner. It totally reduces the cost of developing separate native apps for each platform, which could be significantly high.

With these enormous reasons, developers choose Flutter to build cross-platform applications with rich experiences and native performance.

 

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What Makes Flutter Unique?

Unlike maintaining separate libraries in Java, JavaScript, Swift, Kotlin, and all these tech stacks for developing a single application on multiple OSes, Flutter covers all your code in a single language.

And this results in saving time, effort, stress, and more.

Here are a few characteristics of Flutter that make it unique:

• Rich UI and native performance: If you are building a communication solution, there are pre-designed Flutter video call components as widgets that can be customized to maintain the identity of your branding. These widgets allow you to maintain native-like performance on cross-platforms, facilitating high performance and smooth animations.

• Integration capabilities: Flutter provides easy integration capabilities with third-party libraries and existing native codes. Integrations such as platform-specific APIs, Firebase, REST APIs, State management libraries, In-app purchases, Payment gateways, etc. are done in a hassle-free manner.

• Open-source: Flutter is entirely free to use with multiple integration capabilities, be it video, voice, chat, advertisements, and more. Moreover, Flutter developers are active in enhancing the framework, fixing bugs, adding new features, creating additional packages and plugins, etc. Due to its wide range of community support, Flutter stands alone in upgrading user experiences.

These are some of the key points that make Flutter unique. Yet there are a lot more reasons for a developer to build their video call app in Flutter. 

The Challenges of Building Flutter Video Chat App

Even though it offers enormous benefits and unique features, there are some challenges developers face when using Flutter video call SDKs.

• Lack of libraries: As a developer, you might need third-party libraries for certain functionalities in your software. But Flutter fails in it as of now. Since it is a new framework constantly evolving and improving, it currently doesn’t offer third-party library support, which is free and open-source.

• Continuous Integration: Integrating Flutter with continuous integration (CI) platforms like Github, Travis, Jenkins, etc. can be challenging. You have to create and maintain separate scripts for building, testing, and deploying Flutter apps in the continuous integration process.

• Hanging iOS Features: Flutter is backed by Google, which left the supporting features of iOS hanging. It doesn’t offer proper support on iOS, such as deleting the EXIF data while taking pictures, which might result in improper orientation, location, and gamma. Even some unique iOS accessibility features like voiceover, guided access, captioning, and audio descriptions are not supported in Flutter.

As a fast-growing software, Flutter should be focusing on these cons to make it to the top. But currently, these issues are being faced by developers mostly while building a secure chat application in Flutter with a video call feature.

Top 6 Flutter Video Call App Features in 2024

Flutter facilitates advanced and modern features for video call apps. Yet here are the top six features that rule the market:

• Real-time video and audio calling: With the Flutter video chat application, you can easily make one-to-one and group video and audio calls in real-time.

• Video effects and filters: Flutter allows you to make use of pre-built effects and video filters to make yourself look more attractive and to create user engagement.

• Push notifications: Never miss any important texts or calls; whenever you are needed, you will be notified with push notifications.

• In-app messaging: Flutter allows you to chat even while you are in a video or audio call. With these, you can post your queries and get them answered without disturbing the flow of the meeting or the webinar.

• Screen sharing: Either you are presenting a webinar or in a live meeting, you can always share your screen with other users. It might be presenting your agenda or doing some interesting things that make the audience interact and engage with you.

• End-to-End Encryption: The most important and primary thing about security is how your data is protected. This is the place where end-to-end encryption takes the lead; all your data is encrypted and can only be seen or heard by the sender and receiver.

These top features from Flutter have really played boldly in the video calling app industry. Most of the developers find these features an essential need for a video calling app, and that comes in handy with Flutter, making it more visible.

 

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How to Create a Video Calling App Using Flutter?

Flutter is a great framework for video calling app development with cross-platform support. It supports you with a pre-designed aesthetic UI kit that comes in handy for video chat apps. Here are a few general ways to create a video call app in Flutter:

• Set up a development environment: Install Flutter and have a look at their documentation in order to set up a development environment.

• Create a new Flutter project: Create a Flutter CLI, or you can use your own preferred IDE to create a new Flutter project.

• Add dependencies: Open your project’s ‘pubspec.yaml’ file and add dependencies accordingly. For example, if you are using Flutter WebRTC video call SDKs, then add the ‘flutter_webrtc’ dependency.

• Design UI: You can use Flutter’s widget system to design your video calling app’s user interface. You have to create screens for call display, making and receiving calls, user interactions, scream sharing space, layouts, etc.

• Integrate video calling functionality: You can use the MirrorFly video call API or any other video calling SDK to integrate video calling functionality into your app.

• Implement audio and video streaming: Use the SDK to handle audio and video streaming during the call. It includes handling camera input, displaying remote video streams, and managing audio playback and capture.

• Test and debug: Test your video calling app on different devices and on multiple platforms to make sure it works fine. Debug issues that arise during testing, then test again. Repeat the process until you are completely fine with it.

• Publish and distribute: Once your video calling app is ready, you can publish it and distribute it to the required channels, platforms, use cases, etc.

By following these steps, you can build your own Flutter video calling app that functions as expected even on cross-platforms, similar to native apps.

Integration of MirrorFly SDKs Using Flutter

MirrorFly is the most secure and leading in-app video, voice, and messaging SDK available with easy integration for developers and enterprises. They offer 150+ enriched features like one-on-one and group video calls, screen sharing, file sharing, push notifications, etc.

With MirrorFly SDKs, all your communication channels stay secure through end-to-end encryption and AES-128 security standards. It also enables compatibility with privacy regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and OWASP.

They do offer the business in twin modules.

• SaaS: Highly scalable, messaging SDKs, voice and video, and a month-on-month subscription without the requirement for a credit card.
  
• SaaP: 100% customizable self-hosted chat, voice, and video SDKs at a one-time license cost with complete ownership and white-label solutions. 

6 Steps to Build Flutter Video Call App in 2024

• Step 1: Create a MirrorFly account
• Step 2: Get license key
• Step 3: Add dependencies
• Step 4: Create Flutter dependencies
• Step 5: Initialize MirrorFly plugin
• Step 6: Make & receive a call

Now, we will see in detail about each step in the section below.

Get license key

Step 1: Sign up for a MirrorFly Account

Step 2: Log into your Account

Step 3: Get the License key from the application Info section

Create Android DependencyStep 4: Add the following to your root build.gradle file in your Android folder.

allprojects {
 repositories {
     google()
     mavenCentral()
     jcenter()
     maven {
         url "https://repo.mirrorfly.com/snapshot/"
     }
 }
}

Add the following dependencies in the app/build.gradle file.

android {
    packagingOptions {
     exclude 'META-INF/AL2.0'
     exclude 'META-INF/DEPENDENCIES'
     exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
     exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE.txt'
     exclude 'META-INF/license.txt'
     exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE'
     exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE.txt'
     exclude 'META-INF/notice.txt'
     exclude 'META-INF/ASL2.0'
     exclude 'META-INF/LGPL2.1'
     exclude("META-INF/*.kotlin_module")
   }
}

Create iOS Dependency

Step 5: Check and Add the following code at end of your ios/Podfile

post_install do |installer|
  installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|
    flutter_additional_ios_build_settings(target)
    target.build_configurations.each do |config|
      config.build_settings['IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET'] = '12.1'
      config.build_settings['ENABLE_BITCODE'] = 'NO'
      config.build_settings['APPLICATION_EXTENSION_API_ONLY'] = 'No'
      config.build_settings['BUILD_LIBRARY_FOR_DISTRIBUTION'] = 'YES'
      config.build_settings["EXCLUDED_ARCHS[sdk=iphonesimulator*]"] = "arm64"      
     end
  end
end

Step 6: Now, disable the bitcode for your project

Goto Project -> Build Settings -> Filter the term `Bitcode` -> and select No from the dropdown

Step 7:Now, enable all the below mentioned capabilities into your project.

Goto Project -> Target -> Signing & Capabilities -> Click + at the top left corner -> Search for the capabilities below

Now, go to the background mode and enable the below given modes | Background Modes | | ——————-| |Audio,Airplay, and Picture in Picture | |Voice over IP | |Background fetch | |Remote notifications |

Create Flutter Dependency

Step 8: Add the below dependencies in pubspec.yaml.

dependencies:
  mirrorfly_plugin: ^0.0.12

STEP 9: Run flutter pub get command in your project directory. You can use all classes and methods just with the following import statement

import 'package:mirrorfly_plugin/mirrorfly.dart';

Initialize MirrorFly Plugin

To initialize the plugin, place the below code in your main.dart file inside main function before runApp().

 void main() {
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
  Mirrorfly.init(
      baseUrl: 'https://api-preprod-sandbox.mirrorfly.com/api/v1/',
      licenseKey: 'Your_Mirrorfly_Licence_Key',
      iOSContainerID: 'Your_iOS_app_Group_id');
  runApp(const MyApp());
 }

Note: While registration, the below registerUser method will accept the FCM_TOKEN as an optional param and pass it across. The connection will be established automatically upon completion of registration and not required for seperate login.

Mirrorfly.registerUser(userIdentifier).then((value) {
  // you will get the user registration response
  var userData = registerModelFromJson(value);
}).catchError((error) {
    // Register user failed print throwable to find the exception details.
    debugPrint(error.message);
});

Make a Call

To make a one to one call, call the below method.

Mirrorfly.makeVoiceCall(USER_JID).then((response) {
    if (response) {
      
    }
    }).catchError((e) {
      debugPrint("#Mirrorfly Call Exception $e");
});

Receive a Call

Mirrorfly.onCallStatusUpdated.listen((event) {
  var statusUpdateReceived = jsonDecode(event);
  var callMode = statusUpdateReceived["callMode"].toString();
  var userJid = statusUpdateReceived["userJid"].toString();
  var callType = statusUpdateReceived["callType"].toString();
  var callStatus = statusUpdateReceived["callStatus"].toString();
});

If you have any queries related to integrating Flutter SDKs with your web or mobile app, you can refer to the docs session or request a demo from an tech expert to help you out. Now, you would have got an idea as to how to build video call using Flutter SDKs.

Conclusion

My sincere gratitude for reaching this far and investing your time in reading this article. I hope you have now loaded up with plenty of information to build your own video calling app or easily integrate Flutter video, voice, and chat SDKs from providers like MirrorFly etc.

However, whether you choose to build your own or integrate flutter video call SDK from providers, be clear on your project requirements, team size, user count, and technical expertise. For any other queries, take a look at the FAQs or type your comments below.

I would be happy to solve your queries. If you need any other additional articles based on Flutter, video calling apps, voice chat apps, or any tech stacks, kindly mention them below in the comment section.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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