Random Errors

Posted: June 17, 2020 | Categories: Flutter Development

While building a Flutter application that needed to access information about the system's Wi-Fi network, I encountered the connectivity package. It looked like what I needed, and I quickly added it to my app. In testing with my application, I had connectivity working correctly, but then suddenly it stopped working. I noticed this when I switched from testing on an Android device Emulator; the app would 'run' but returned null for Wi-Fi network name and BSSID.

I had no idea what I did to the app, but I knew it was working and that suddenly it wasn't. I looked carefully at the app source and compared it to the example code on the package's landing page, but made no progress. I noticed that when testing it on a device, that a permissions dialog popped up asking me to approve permission for location settings (the ability to tell where an Android device is tied to Wi-Fi settings for security purposes - who knew?), but the dialog would close before I could do anything, then the app crashed. That led me to think I had a permissions issue.

I knew there were permission settings I needed, but the package landing page and documentation made no reference to them. I headed over to Stack Overflow and created an issue. While I waited for a response there, I poked around on the Internet until I found an issue in the Flutter repo that seemed to describe my issue. Looking deeper, it was a permissions issue and the solution was there in the comments.

Flutter doesn't seem to have a way to query an app user for permissions, so someone created the Flutter permissions_handler package. Adding that to my app, and a variant of the code shown in the original issue, solved my issue.

I quickly realized that the answer on the Flutter repo was incomplete and anyone trying to implement this solution would need some help. To make it easier for these developers, I created a complete sample application you can use to see the complete solution: Flutter Connectivity Package Android Permissions. Use Issues there if you have any questions, I'll try to answer.