What is Flutter WebRTC? A Complete Guide
Published On January 22nd, 2024 Communication
We are living in an era of technological growth at its peak. Post-pandemic, we’ve seen the rise of audio and video calling technologies and the enhancements that took place in them.
The pandemic made us realize the importance of communication in business and also made remote work possible. Audio and video calls played a major role in these enhancements, promoting multi-platform apps.
More than 46% of the developers use Flutter as their cross-platform framework, along with the real-time communication protocol WebRTC. Flutter WebRTC is a key to the modern communication apps in the world right now.
Further in this blog, let’s have a clear discussion about Flutter WebRTC, their work structure, advanced features of WebRTC Flutter, and more.
Table of Contents
What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source, multi-platform framework developed by Google. It is an easy-to-use UI toolkit for developing and deploying apps on iOS, Android, the Web, and desktops with a single-code base. Flutter is often used with Dart, an object-oriented programming language developed by Google.
Flutter is popular and well-known for its key benefits, such as
- Hot reload feature
- Single-code base
- Cross-platform compatibility
- Open-source
- Access to third-party libraries
- Large community support
What is WebRTC?
WebRTC stands for Web real-time communication protocol, which is a free open-source project that facilitates real-time communication among peers via APIs (application programming interfaces).
These APIs can be integrated into any web or mobile app. Here are some of the key benefits of WebRTC:
- High-quality communication
- Low latency
- No need for additional plugins
- End-to-end encryption
- Easy to use
- Multi-platform compatibility
What is Flutter WebRTC?
Flutter WebRTC is a plugin for the Flutter framework to build secure multi-platform apps with real-time audio and video functionalities.
Some key benefits of Flutter WebRTC are
- Cross-platform compatibility
- SIP protocol stack
- WebRTC library
- Easy API integration
- Signaling server
- Error handling and debugging
- Community support
How Does Flutter WebRTC App Works?
Flutter WebRTC uses the W3C WebRTC API, which allows developers to build cross-platform-compatible real-time video calling applications with ease. The API takes care of heavy loads, which enables developers to concentrate on building the app without worrying about real-time functionalities.
Handling Errors and Debugging Your Application
Handling errors and debugging your application in the WebRTC Flutter project involves a few steps, as follows:
1. Checking for known issues: If you encounter any errors while working on your FLutter-WebRTC plugin, you can easily look into the issues through the plugin’s GitHub page for known issues.
2. Enabling debug logging: You can enable debug logging to help troubleshoot your application. Here’s how you can do it:
cation. Here’s how you can do it:
// Create a new instance of the WebrtcLog class
WebrtcLog _webrtcLog;
// Use the WebrtcLog methods to start and stop logging
_webrtcLog = WebrtcLog(onMessage: (String message) {});
await _webrtcLog.start();
// To stop logging:
await _webrtcLog.stop();
A callback function is available in the WebrtcLog class for when a log message is generated. This callback can be used to show the log message in the user interface of your program.
3. Reporting Errors to a Service: Create a report regarding the error and the associated stack trace. Once the report is prepared, you can send it to error tracking services like Bugsnag, Datadog, Firebase Crashlytics, Rollbar, or Sentry.
Debugging is an important part of development. It helps you troubleshoot problems that may not become evident with frequent use and understand what’s going on beneath the surface.
Using a Signaling Server
A WebRTC connection can be enabled by exchanging signaling data among peers. This data typically includes information such as session descriptions and ICE candidates. The Flutter-WebRTC plugin doesn’t provide a signaling server, so you have to implement it on your own.
But here is a simple way. The Flutter-WebRTC community maintains a flutter-webrtc-server project that provides a simple signaling data server for the WebRTC-Flutter plugin. Here’s how you can make use of it.
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/flutter-webrtc/flutter-webrtc-server.git
# Change directory
cd flutter-webrtc-server
# Use mkcert to create a self-signed certificate
brew update
brew install mkcert
mkcert -key-file configs/certs/key.pem -cert-file configs/certs/cert.pem localhost 127.0.0.1 ::1 0.0.0.0
# Run the server
brew install golang
go run cmd/server/main.go
After running these commands, open https://0.0.0.0:8086 for Flutter Web Demo. Check webrtc-flutter-demo to test the mobile app.
In order to use it in a production environment, perform multiple tests to make sure of the result.
Advanced Features of Flutter WebRTC
The Flutter WebRTC plugin has multiple advanced features for real-time video and audio calling apps. Here come the advanced features of the WebRTC Flutter plugin.
- Data Channels: Along with video and audio data, data channels allow you to send optional data among peers.
- Screen Capture: Flutter-WebRTC allows you to share screen among peers in a one-to-one or group video call and conferencing.
- Unified Plan: The Unified Plan SDP format is supported by the plugin, enabling more adaptable media settings.
- Simulcast: Using this technique, the sender can encode the same media multiple times in different qualities.
- Media Recorder: The Flutter WebRTC plugin allows you to record both audio and video calls in an ongoing session.
- FrameCryptor: This ensures all your audio and video calls are end-to-end encrypted.
- Insertable Streams: This WebRTC Flutter plugin feature allows you to control the media streams directly.
These are some of the advanced features of the Flutter WebRTC plugin that allow you to create an advanced real-time audio and video calling app.
Integrate Flutter-WebRTC with the MirrorFly SDK
MirrorFly is a secure in-app chat, voice, and video API provider for iOS, Android, Web, and desktop. It has 150+ enriched communication features for real-time communication with multi-platform compatibility by enabling Flutter WebRTC plugin.
MirrorFly SDKs are compatible with apps of any size and have advanced security features and API infrastructure.
Here are some of the key features of the MirrorFly SDK’s Flutter WebRTC plugin.
- Integration in < 10 minutes
- Multi-platform compatibility
- Ultra-low latency
- 99.999% uptime SLA
- End-to-end encryption
- One-on-one and group video and voice calls
- Video conferencing
- Compatible with privacy regulation laws HIPAA, GDPR, and OWASP
- Highly scalable APIs
- Multi-tenancy support
- Large file sharing
Moreover, MirrorFly in-app communication SDKs allow you to integrate their SDKs at a one-time license fee with complete ownership of source codes or buy on month-on-month subscription packages. Book a quick demo to check your app’s feasibility with the Flutter-WebRTC plugin.
Signing Off
Thank you for reaching this far by investing your time in reading this article. I hope this article gives you enough data regarding the Flutter WebRTC plugin. If you are planning to integrate the WebRTC Flutter plugin into your app, try a demo with multiple providers.
If you still have any queries regarding the Flutter WebRTC plugin, you can post them in the comments section below or talk to an expert who can clarify your queries in real-time.
Good luck on your search. Adios Amigo! Signing off.
Krishi Shivasangaran is a digital nomad and a veteran of Digital Marketing strategies. She is passionate about learning the newest trends in video APIs. And, when she's off-role, she loves to sketch and make people realize the true color of nature.
