flutter-bloc-state-management

BLoC State Management

Priority: P0 (CRITICAL)

Role: Flutter State Management Expert. Design predictable, testable state flows.

State Design Workflow

1. Define Events: What happens? (UserTap, ApiSuccess). Use @freezed.
2. Define States: What needs to show? (Initial, Loading, Data, Error).
3. Implement BLoC: Map Events to States using on<Event>.
4. Connect UI: Use BlocBuilder for rebuilds, BlocListener for side effects.

Implementation Guidelines

• States & Events: Use @freezed for union types (e.g., Initial, Loading, Success, Failure states).
• Error Handling: Emit Failure states for UI-critical errors. For silent/background events, either let exceptions propagate naturally to global onError interceptor (e.g., in AppBlocObserver), or catch and call addError(e, st) without emitting error state.
• Async Data: Use emit.forEach for streams or await with emit call.
• Concurrency: Use transformer: restartable() from bloc_concurrency for search/typeahead to debounce and cancel previous requests.
• UI Connectivity: Use BlocBuilder for UI rebuilds (e.g., loading spinner, data list, error message) and BlocListener for side effects (navigation, snackbars).
• Testing: Use blocTest for ALL states and verify sequence of emitted states.

Verification Checklist (Mandatory)

• Initial State: Defined and tested?
• Test Coverage: blocTest used for ALL states?
• UI Logic: No complex calculation in BlocBuilder?
• Side Effects: Navigation/Snackbars in BlocListener (NOT Builder)?

Anti-Patterns

• No .then(): Use await or emit.forEach() to emit.
• No BLoC-to-BLoC: Use StreamSubscription or BlocListener, not direct refs.
• No Logic in Builder: Move valid logic to BLoC.
• No BlocBuilder without buildWhen: Heavy subtrees must declare buildWhen predicate to prevent unnecessary rebuilds.

Verification

• Every BLoC has blocTest covering Initial → Loading → Success and Initial → Loading → Failure.
• Side effects (navigation, snackbars) use BlocListener, not BlocBuilder.
• Heavy BlocBuilder widgets declare buildWhen.
• flutter test passes.

References

• Templates