Dart Lesson 100 of 102 5 min read

Dart Practice Projects and Exercises for Beginners

Fifteen Dart project ideas from beginner to advanced, with the skills each one practises, to turn what you have learned into real ability.

Reading about Dart gives you knowledge. Building things gives you skill. This page lists projects in rising order of difficulty. All of them can be written as command-line programs with plain Dart, with no Flutter needed.

How to get the most from a project #

1. Build the smallest version first. One feature, working end to end.
2. Type the code yourself. Do not copy and paste.
3. Get stuck on purpose. Struggle for twenty minutes before searching. That is when the learning happens.
4. Refactor when it works. Rename things, split big functions, remove repetition.
5. Add tests to at least one project.
6. Put it on GitHub, with a README. A few finished projects are worth more than many unfinished ones.

Beginner projects #

These use the first five chapters: basics, control flow, functions and collections.

1. Number guessing game #

The program picks a random number from 1 to 100. The player guesses, and the program replies “too high” or “too low” until they get it, then reports the number of attempts.

• Practises: Random, stdin, int.tryParse, while loops, if/else.
• Extend it: difficulty levels, a limit on guesses, a best score saved to a file.

2. Unit converter #

Convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit, kilometres and miles, kilograms and pounds. Show a menu and ask for the value.

• Practises: functions, switch, double formatting, input validation.
• Extend it: store the conversions in a map so that adding one needs no new code.

3. Grade calculator #

Read marks for several subjects, then print the total, the average, the highest and lowest, and a letter grade for each.

• Practises: lists, reduce and fold, map, string formatting.

4. Word counter #

Given some text, report the number of characters, words and sentences, and the five most common words.

• Practises: string methods, split, maps for counting, sorting map entries.

5. Simple calculator #

Read an expression such as 12 * 4 and print the answer. Handle division by zero and bad input.

• Practises: string parsing, switch expressions, exceptions.
• Extend it: support several operations in one line, with correct precedence.

Intermediate projects #

These bring in null safety, classes, error handling, files and JSON.

6. To-do list manager #

Add, list, complete and delete tasks from the command line. Save them in a JSON file so they are still there next time.

• Practises: classes, fromJson and toJson, file reading and writing, command-line arguments.
• Extend it: due dates, priorities with an enum, filtering and sorting.

7. Contact book #

Store contacts with a name, phone number and email. Support search, edit and delete, and validate phone numbers and emails.

• Practises: classes, maps, regular expressions, custom exceptions.

8. Bank account simulator #

Model Account, SavingsAccount and CurrentAccount. Support deposits, withdrawals and transfers, and keep a transaction history.

• Practises: inheritance, abstract classes, getters and setters, private fields, custom exceptions, DateTime.
• Extend it: monthly interest, overdraft limits, a statement saved to a file.

9. Quiz game #

Load questions from a JSON file, ask them in random order, keep score, and show the results with the correct answers at the end.

• Practises: JSON, model classes, shuffle, records for returning a score and a total.
• Extend it: categories, a time limit per question using Future.timeout.

10. Library management system #

Track books and members. Members borrow and return books; the program prevents borrowing unavailable books and calculates late fees.

• Practises: several classes working together, enums, collections, date arithmetic.

11. Expense tracker #

Record expenses with an amount, a category and a date. Report totals per category and per month.

• Practises: enhanced enums, grouping with maps, fold, date handling, extension methods.

Advanced projects #

These use async code, HTTP, streams, generics, patterns and packages.

12. Weather command-line app #

Take a city name, call a free weather API, and display the current conditions and forecast.

• Practises: the http package, async/await, JSON decoding, error handling, timeouts, the args package.
• Extend it: cache responses in a file for ten minutes, compare several cities in parallel with Future.wait.

13. File organiser #

Scan a folder and move files into sub-folders by type (images, documents, videos) or by month. Offer a dry-run mode that only prints what would happen.

• Practises: dart:io directories, the path package, streams, switch on extensions, command-line flags.

14. Text adventure game #

A game where the player moves between rooms, picks up items and solves puzzles by typing commands.

• Practises: sealed classes for commands, pattern matching, maps of rooms, state management, saving and loading the game.

15. A small REST API server #

Build a JSON API for the to-do list using the shelf package: list, create, update and delete tasks over HTTP.

• Practises: server-side Dart, routing, JSON, async handlers, status codes, testing with a fake store.
• Extend it: store the data in SQLite, and build a Flutter app that talks to your API.

Quick exercises for daily practice #

Ten minutes each. Try them without looking anything up.

1. Reverse a string without using split or reversed.
2. Check whether a string is a palindrome, ignoring spaces and case.
3. Find the second-largest number in a list.
4. Remove duplicates from a list while keeping the original order.
5. Count the vowels in a sentence.
6. Print FizzBuzz from 1 to 100 using a switch expression.
7. Check whether two strings are anagrams of each other.
8. Flatten a list of lists into a single list.
9. Group a list of words by their first letter into a map.
10. Find all pairs of numbers in a list that add up to a target.
11. Write a function that returns the minimum, maximum and average as a record.
12. Convert a number from 1 to 3999 into Roman numerals.
13. Write a generic Stack<T> and a generic Queue<T>.
14. Merge two sorted lists into one sorted list.
15. Write an async function that retries a failing operation three times.

Sites such as Exercism, LeetCode and Advent of Code accept Dart solutions and provide endless further practice.

After these #

• Learn Flutter and rebuild one of the projects above as a mobile app. Start with what Flutter is.
• Read other people’s code. Popular packages on pub.dev are excellent teachers.
• Contribute a small fix or a documentation improvement to an open-source package.
• Publish a package of your own. See publishing packages.

Try it yourself #

Choose one project from the beginner list and finish it today, however rough. Tomorrow, choose one from the intermediate list and give it a week.