There is a post on dart's website and it explains it pretty well.
Final:
"final" means single-assignment: a final variable or field must have an initializer. Once assigned a value, a final variable's value cannot be changed. final modifies variables.
Const:
"const" has a meaning that's a bit more complex and subtle in Dart. const modifies values. You can use it when creating collections, like const [1, 2, 3], and when constructing objects (instead of new) like const Point(2, 3). Here, const means that the object's entire deep state can be determined entirely at compile time and that the object will be frozen and completely immutable.
Const objects have a couple of interesting properties and restrictions:
They must be created from data that can be calculated at compile time. A const object does not have access to anything you would need to calculate at runtime. 1 + 2 is a valid const expression, but new DateTime.now() is not.
They are deeply, transitively immutable. If you have a final field containing a collection, that collection can still be mutable. If you have a const collection, everything in it must also be const, recursively.
They are canonicalized. This is sort of like string interning: for any given const value, a single const object will be created and re-used no matter how many times the const expression(s) are evaluated.
So, what does this mean?
Const:
If the value you have is computed at runtime (new DateTime.now()
, for example), you can not use a const for it. However, if the value is known at compile time (const a = 1;
), then you should use const
over final
. There are 2 other large differences between const
and final
. Firstly, if you're using const
, you have to declare it as static const
rather than just const
. Secondly, if you have a const
collection, everything inside of that is in const
. If you have a final
collection, everything inside of that is not final
.
Final:
final
should be used over const
if you don't know the value at compile time, and it will be calculated/grabbed at runtime. If you want an HTTP response that can't be changed, if you want to get something from a database, or if you want to read from a local file, use final
. Anything that isn't known at compile time should be final
over const
.
With all of that being said, both const
and final
cannot be reassigned, but fields in a final
object, as long as they aren't const
or final
themselves, can be reassigned (unlike const
).