Flutter chat app demo

This is a basic chat app built with Flutter and Ably.

You can check out a short video demo of this application along with some explanation of the code.

How to run this app locally

1. Clone this repo and cd to the folder containing the project files:

git clone https://github.com/ably-labs/flutter-chat-demo.git

cd flutter-chat-demo/realtime_chat_ably

2. Create a free account with Ably to get your API Key.

3. Add a file called config.dart in /realtime_chat_ably/lib and paste the following:

const String AblyAPIKey = "YOUR-ABLY-API-KEY";

Replace the placeholder with your own API Key

4. Run flutter packages get to install the dependencies

5. Open two or more simulators on your system

6. Run flutter run -d all to run the app on all the simulator devices

When you send a message in one of the devices, it should come up in realtime on all the devices.

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What is Ably?

Ably is a pub/sub messaging platform with a suite of integrated services to deliver complete realtime functionality directly to end-users.

This project uses Ably's Flutter plugin to enable realtime chat between any number of users.

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The app's UI is adopted from Marcus Ng's YouTube video - Flutter Chat UI Tutorial | Apps From Scratch

Other notes

• All of Ably's messaging limits, broken down by package can be found in a support article.

• If you have any questions, please leave a message to me directly on Twitter or reach out to Ably's support team at support@ably.com.

• It'll be amazing and helpful to other developers to add more features to this chat app, please check out the open issues if you'd like to contribute to this project.