Flutter Instagram Stories App Plugin

April 21, 2020 Flutter App, Social Media

Short Info: Stories like in Instagram, each story can include multiple images and videos. Package supports video, titles, preliminary caching.

flutter_instagram_stories

A Flutter plugin for displaying stories just like Whatsapp & Instagram. Built-in groups (multiple stories with one icon), cache, video, gifs.

Plugin can be used in any app for displaying news, educational content and etc. Look the sample app here.

Note: This plugin is under active development, and there are some known bugs and a lot of features to implement. Please, add issues or feature requests here: issue

The project was initially copied from https://github.com/blackmann/story_view – great thanks for this nice package. In case you more flexible functionality you can check the original project.

Important notes:

For now plugin works with Firebase only.
This is first beta version, please add all issues and feature requests here: issue

Features

Only one line of code to implement this plugin to app.
Display images, gifs, videos.
Adjustable titles on icons.
Preliminary caching after app started.
Multilanguage support.
Callback when user closed stories – helps to implement subscriptions after first launch and etc.

Installing

Look how install here https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_instagram_stories#-installing-tab-

Now in your Dart code, you can use:

import 'package:flutter_instagram_stories/flutter_instagram_stories.dart';

iOS

For playing video plugin uses official video_player https://pub.dev/packages/video_player

From documentation:

Warning: The video_player plugin doesn’t work on iOS simulators. You must test videos on real iOS devices.
For iOS, add the following to the Info.plist file found at /ios/Runner/Info.plist.NSAppTransportSecurity NSAllowsArbitraryLoads

Usage

You can find complete working example here https://github.com/awaik/flutter_instagram_stories/tree/master/example

Dart code

Connect to collection where you keep stories

    static String collectionDbName = 'instagram_stories_db';
    CollectionReference dbInstance =
      Firestore.instance.collection(collectionDbName);

And add stories full functionality to your app.

    FlutterInstagramStories(
        collectionDbName: collectionDbName,
        showTitleOnIcon: true,
        backFromStories: () {
          _backFromStoriesAlert();
        },
        iconTextStyle: TextStyle(
          fontSize: 14.0,
          color: Colors.white,
        ),
        iconImageBorderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(15.0),
        iconBoxDecoration: BoxDecoration(
          borderRadius: BorderRadius.all(Radius.circular(15.0)),
          color: Color(0xFFffffff),
          boxShadow: [
            BoxShadow(
              color: Color(0xff333333),
              blurRadius: 10.0,
              offset: Offset(
                0.0,
                4.0,
              ),
            ),
          ],
        ),
        iconWidth: 150.0,
        iconHeight: 150.0,
        textInIconPadding:
            EdgeInsets.only(left: 8.0, right: 8.0, bottom: 12.0),
        //how long story lasts in seconds
        imageStoryDuration: 7,
        progressPosition: ProgressPosition.top,
        repeat: true,
        inline: false,
        languageCode: 'en',
        closeButtonIcon: Icon(
          Icons.close,
          color: Colors.blueGrey,
          size: 28.0,
        ),
        closeButtonBackgroundColor: Color(0x00ffffff),
      ),

Firestore database

Plugin works with Firestore database and package https://pub.dev/packages/cloud_firestore already included into plugin.

You can use example with sample database in example folder or create your own database.

Steps to create:

Add Firebase to your app

Create Firestore database

Create collection with any name. After you will use this name in dart code only once.
Create documents inside collection with exact structure, like on image below

    DateTime date;
    List file
       // for example
       // [{String filetype, String url}
       //  {String filetype, String url}
       //  ...]
    String previewImage;
    Map previewTitle
       // for example
       // {"en": someText, "anyLangCode": someText}