Flutter Web App Deployment

Flutter Web Deploy: How to Deploy a Flutter Web App?

Posted by Milind Mevada

17 Mar 20 • 4 min read

With the stable release of Flutter 1.12, Flutter for web is now in the beta channel. But ahead of a beta release, the community has already started building apps for Flutter web.

While building web apps, deploying them is one of the most essential tasks — be it is for internal QA purposes, for staging, or production environments. Before releasing the Flutter web app, it is required to create a release bundle and a few of the best practices to release, which are explained here in detail.

From my experience of building and deploying Flutter web apps, I’m going to discuss the top 5 ways (step-by-step) to deploy Flutter web apps. They are:

  1. Firebase Hosting
  2. Github Pages
  3. Netlify
  4. Codemagic Static Pages
  5. AWS S3 (through codemagic)
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#1: Deploy Flutter web app to Firebase Hosting

The first way to deploy Flutter web apps is to host your Flutter web app on Firebase and here are the steps to do so-

Step 1: Create a project on Firebase console
Step 2: Download Firebase CLI
Step 3: Login via CLI, execute the command firebase login

Deploy Flutter web app to Firebase Hosting - Create a project on Firebase console

Step 4: Choose Firebase “Hosting” for Flutter web app when asked for a feature

Deploy Flutter web app to Firebase Hosting - Choose Firebase “Hosting” for Flutter web app

Step 5: Then, Select an existing Project

Deploy Flutter web app to Firebase Hosting - Project setup

Step 6: Choose build/web as a directory & configure as a single-page app

Deploy Flutter web app to Firebase Hosting - Hosting setup

f you see, File build/web/index.html already exists. Overwrite?
Then select NO. So it will not generate a default index.html file

Step 7: Deploy Flutter web to Firebase!

firebase deploy
Deploy Flutter web app to Firebase Hosting - Deploy hosting
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#2: Deploy Flutter web app to Github Pages

Another way to deploy Flutter web apps is using Github Pages and here are its steps-

Pre-requisites: Create a repo on Github.

Step 1: Use this pub

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Execute the command

flutter pub global run peanut:peanut

Step 2: Flutter web-related files will be generated to the separate branch gh-pages (Don’t forget to push the branch origin)

Step 3: Change the GitHub pages source branch.
Go to: Repository → Settings → Options → Github Pages → Source branch: select gh-pages

image

Step 4: Flutter Web app will be deployed to Github

http(s)://<username>.github.io/<build>

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#3: Deploy Flutter web app to Netlify

Pre-requisites: Create an account on https://www.netlify.com/

Approach 1:

Step 1: Drag & Drop build/web folder to dashboard

image

Step 2: The web app will be deployed and the domain will be given to you.
Step 3 (Optional): The web app can be connected with the custom domain/subdomain.

Approach 2:

Step 1: Use the same peanut pub

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Step 2: Generate web-related files to the gh-pages branch
Step 3: Choose New site from git on the netlify dashboard
Step 4: Choose the repository & select branch to deploy

image

Step 4: Deploy Flutter Site to Netlify.

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#4: Deploy Flutter web app to Codemagic Static Pages

Step 1: Connect repository to https://codemagic.io/
Step 2: Go to Settings — Publish — Codemagic static pages
Step 3: Choose your custom subdomain

image

Step 4: Trigger a build, on the success, it will be deployed to:

https://sub-domain.codemagic.app/

#5: Deploy Flutter web app on AWS S3 (via Codemagic)

Step 1: Log in to your AWS Management Console.
Step 2: Click on your user name at the top right of the page.
Step 3: Click on the Security Credentials link from the drop-down menu.
Step 4: Find the Access Credentials section, and copy the latest Access Key ID.
Step 5: Click on the Show link in the same row, and copy the Secret Access Key.
Step 6: Choose repo on codemagic
Step 7: Go to Settings — Publish — AWS S3 Bucket

image

Step 8: Fill the Access key ID, secret access Key, and Bucket name
Step 9: Trigger a build, on the success, it will be deployed to an S3 bucket

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We have enough approaches to deploy/release a Flutter web app, that can be chosen for the QA environment as well as the production releases. Connecting it with CI/CD like Codemagic will reduce the repeating effort of manual deployments.

FAQS

Stay curious, Questions?

Where can I host a Flutter web app?

Click to show answer

Top 5 ways to host Flutter web apps:

  1. Firebase Hosting
  2. Github Pages
  3. Netlify
  4. Codemagic Static Pages
  5. AWS S3 (through codemagic)

How do I deploy Flutter web on localhost?

Click to show answer

You simply need to do a production build by using a webdev tool. to install webdev you need a pub tool

  1. Go to the root folder of your project from terminal and do a build in release mode and run flutter build web
  2. You should see a build folder (/build/web) in the root directory, just copy that folder and host it on a web server.

How to deploy Flutter Web to my own server?

Click to show answer

  1. Go to the root folder of your project from terminal and do a build in release mode and run flutter build web
  2. You should see a build folder (/build/web) in the root directory, just copy that folder, Your application is enclosed into a main.dart.js file.
  3. Copy everything that is in the web folder to wherever you want to publish / host your application.

How can I deploy a flutter web application to an existing website hosted on Firebase?

Click to show answer

You can simply paste all the files that Flutter generates in your Firebase hosting's public directory. Follow these steps:

  1. Go to the root folder of your project from terminal and do a build in release mode and run flutter build web
  2. You should see a build folder (/build/web) in the root directory, just copy that folder, Your application is enclosed into a main.dart.js file.
  3. Copy build files in public directory: If you already have a Firebase hosting project, then I assume your public directory already has some files.
  4. Assume your new file name is page-3.html ,That page-3.html file will look for main.dart.js file in the same directory so if you move that JS file to any other directory, let's say, /js/main.dart.js then don't forget to change that in page-3.html
  5. Try serving your website locally using firebase serve --only hosting command.
  6. If the page returns 404 on /page-3 but works on /page-3.html then checkout this answer on cleanUrls.

How can I deploy a flutter web application to Github

Click to show answer

  1. Go to the root folder of your project from terminal and do a build in release mode and run flutter build web
  2. You should see a build folder (/build/web) in the root directory, just copy that folder, Your application is enclosed into a main.dart.js file.
  3. Create a repo on Github.
  4. Use package https://pub.dev/packages/peanut​
  5. flutter pub global run peanut:peanut
  6. Flutter web-related files will be generated to the separate branch gh-pages (Don’t forget to push the branch origin)
  7. Change the GitHub pages source branch.Go to: Repository → Settings → Options → Github Pages → Source branch: select gh-pages
  8. Flutter Web app will be deployed to Github http(s)://<username>.github.io/<build>

How can I deploy a flutter web application to AWS S3 (through codemagic)

Click to show answer

  1. Go to the root folder of your project from terminal and do a build in release mode and run flutter build web
  2. You should see a build folder (/build/web) in the root directory, just copy that folder, Your application is enclosed into a main.dart.js file.
  3. Log in to your AWS Management Console.
  4. Go to Security Credentials link from the drop-down menu (username >Security Credentials)
  5. Find the Access Credentials section, and copy the latest Access Key ID.
  6. copy the Secret Access Key.
  7. Choose repo on codemagic and Go to Settings — Publish — AWS S3 Bucket
  8. Fill the Access key ID, secret access Key, and Bucket name
  9. Trigger a build created from step 1, on the success, it will be deployed to an S3 bucket

How can I deploy a flutter web application to Netlify

Click to show answer

  1. Go to the root folder of your project from the terminal and do a build in release mode and run flutter build web.
  2. You should see a build folder (/build/web) in the root directory, just copy that folder, Your application is enclosed into a main.dart.js file.
  3. Create an account on https://www.netlify.com/​
  4. Drag & Drop build/web folder to dashboard
  5. The web app will be deployed and the domain will be given to you.
  6. (Optional): The web app can be connected with the custom domain/subdomain.