In the last post we discussed numbers, strings and booleans. In this one, we will conclude built-in types by discussing lists and maps. Let's get started.

Lists in Dart

Lists are basically a list of numbers or words or both. Let's say you want to store age of all the students in a class. You would need a list. Let's say you need to store list of names of all cities in the world, you would need a List. Just like variables, there are multiple ways to declare a list, let's have a look at them.

    var a = [1,2,3];
    var b = ["abc","sdf"];
    var c = [1,2,"abc"];

    List<int> e = [1,2,3];
    List<String> f = ["def","abc"];
    List<dynamic>  g = [1,2,"abc"];

If you remember from the section on variables, var auto infers the type of varoiable. In the case of list too, var auto infers the type of list. In case of a, we are creating a list of integers, in case of b, we are creating a list of strings. In these cases, it is pretty clear for var to infer the type of list, however in case of c we have put integers as well as string in list and var can't decide for sure what the type should be, thus the list is assigned a dynamic type. Other method of declaring a list is using List<type> instead of var. When we use this type of syntax, we are locking the list of some particular type, and hence list can take only that type of data. However if we lock it to dynamic type we can put any type of data we like. Now let's look at how we can get values stored in list, and how many values are stored in list.

    var a = [12,13,14];

    print(a[0]); // 12

    print(a.length); // 3

So we can access values in the list using their index. The index is the position os an elemnet in a list. In many programming language positions in a list start with zero. So in our case 12 is at position zero, 13 is at position one and so on. To access these elements, we use square brackets syntax to reference elements at a particular index. Next to get the total number of elements in list, or the length of the list, we use a method ( will cover in later sections) called length. It gives the total number of elements in the list. Next let's see how we can change elements in a list and create a constant list, so that it's values can't be changed in a program.

    var a [1,2,3];

    a[1] = 12;

    print(a[1]);  // 12 -> value changed

    var b = const [1,2,3]; // we can't use final here

    b[1] = 12;  // error

Let's discuss the above code snippet. First we are creating a list, next we are changing the element at a particular index and printing it. All well and good till here. Next if we want to create a constant list, we use const just before the list assignment. If you remember from our previous discussion final creates a constant variable and cosnt creates a constant value. In our case we are looking at a specific use case of constant value. We can't use final over here. In the next line we can see that changing a value at a particular index gives us an error. We will revist lists and some of it's methods later, but for the built-in section sake of it, we are done with lists. Let's move to maps.

Maps in Dart

Maps in dart are some kay-value pair. If you are coming from java, it is very similar to hashmaps. Let's say, you wanted to store the marks of all the students in a class, you would you a list, but if you wanted to store it along with their name in a way where when asked for marks of a particular student, you should be able to tell it instantly without looking through all the items, you would use a Map. You would use names as a key and marks as values to those keys. Let's look at different ways in which you can declare a map.

    var a = {
        "abc" : 1,
        "sdf" : 2    
    };
    
    var b = {
        2 : "de",
        3 : "eff"    
    };
    
    var c = {
        1 : "de",
        2 : "rr",
        "Dede" : 22,
            
    } ;

   Map<String,int> d = {
        "abc" : 1,
        "sdf" : 2    
    };
    
    Map<int,String> e = {
        2 : "de",
        3 : "eff"    
    };
    
    Map<dynamic, dynamic> f = {
        1 : "de",
        2 : "rr",
        "Dede" : 22,
            
    } ;

We have six maps declared above. Let's look at them one by one. First let me point it to you that as always var will auto infer the type during declaration. Now In case of a the key's are always string and values are always integers, so the type of maps become Map<String,int>. In second case the key is an integer, and the value is an string so the type of map is Map<int,String>. Now since these were well defined, the types were locked and you cannot assign a new value to map which doesn't adhere to the inferred type here, however in the third type, durin assignment we have dynamic key type as well as dynamic value type, hence var auto infers it to Map<dynamic,dynamic> and any type of key-value pair can be put in the map. We have another way of declaring a map, i.e. by using Map<type,type>, here we specifically lock the type of map. Let's how we can change and reference a key-value pair in a map and how to create a constant map.

    var a = {
        "abs" : 12    
    };

    print(a["abs"]);  // 12

    a["abs"] = 13;

    print(a["abs"]);  // 13

    var b = const {
        "abs" : 12
    };

    b["abs"] = 13;    // error

We reference maps just like lists, using []. We can change or add the values using the square bracket too. Declaring a map constant is very similar to list as well. We can also find length of a map just like a list too. This is it for this one. Will see you in the next one. There you go guys, you made it to end of the post. Please check out the video below if you still have any doubts. Subscribe to my youtube channel and my mailing list below for regular updates. Follow me on twitter , drop me a mail or leave a comment here if you still have any doubts and I will try my best to help you out. Thanks

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