Exploring the Expandable Text Widget in Flutter

Enhancing User Experience with Flutter's Expandable Text Widget

22 May, 2023

Contributors

Hasnain Makada

@hasnainmakada-99

Introduction

Flutter, Google's open-source UI development framework, offers a plethora of widgets that empower developers to create rich and interactive user interfaces. Among these widgets, the "Expandable Text" widget stands out as a powerful tool for handling large amounts of text content in a space-efficient manner. In this blog post, we will delve into the functionality and implementation of the Expandable Text widget in Flutter.

What is an Expandable Text Widget?

The Expandable Text widget is designed to handle situations where lengthy text needs to be displayed in limited-screen real estate. It provides users with the ability to expand and collapse text content, thereby ensuring a better user experience. When the text is collapsed, only a truncated version or a summary is visible, while the full text is revealed upon expansion.

Implementation

To use the Expandable Text widget, we first need to import the necessary Flutter package by adding the following line to the dependencies section of the pubspec.yaml file:

dependencies:
  expandable_text: any

After importing the package, we can create an Expandable Text widget by utilizing the ExpandableText class. Here's an example implementation:

import 'package:expandable_text/expandable_text.dart';
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

class MyExpandableTextWidget extends StatelessWidget {
  final String text;

  MyExpandableTextWidget({required this.text});

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return ExpandableText(
      text,
      expandText: 'Read more',
      collapseText: 'Read less',
      maxLines: 3,
      linkColor: Colors.blue,
      style: TextStyle(fontSize: 16.0),
    );
  }
}

In the above code snippet, we define a custom MyExpandableTextWidget that takes a text parameter. The text parameter represents the full content that we want to display. Within the build method, we create an ExpandableText widget, providing it with the necessary parameters such as text, expandText, collapseText, maxLines, linkColor, and style. These parameters allow us to customize the behaviour and appearance of the widget.

The expandText and collapseText parameters define the text to display for expanding and collapsing the content, respectively. The maxLines parameter determines the number of lines to show when the text is collapsed. The linkColor parameter sets the colour of the expand/collapse text, and the style parameter enables us to define the text's font size and other properties.

Benefits and Use Cases

The Expandable Text widget offers several benefits and can be used in various scenarios, such as:

Limited screen space: When dealing with limited-screen real estate, the Expandable Text widget ensures that the content remains concise and easily scannable.
Long paragraphs: For articles, blog posts, or product descriptions, the Expandable Text widget helps avoid overwhelming the user with an excessive amount of text, improving readability and engagement.
User-generated content: When displaying user-generated content, such as comments or reviews, the Expandable Text widget allows users to expand and collapse lengthy contributions, creating a cleaner interface.

Conclusion

The Expandable Text widget in Flutter is a valuable tool for managing large amounts of text within limited screen space. By providing expand and collapse functionality, it enhances the user experience by allowing users to choose whether they want to delve deeper into the content. As Flutter continues to evolve, widgets like this serve as powerful aids for developers to create dynamic and user-friendly interfaces.

flutter

widgets

expandabletext