flutter - How to use `GlobalKey` to maintain widgets' states when changing parents?

Question

In Emily Fortuna's article (and video) she mentions:

GlobalKeys have two uses: they allow widgets to change parents anywhere in your app without losing state, or they can be used to access information about another widget in a completely different part of the widget tree. An example of the first scenario might if you wanted to show the same widget on two different screens, but holding all the same state, you’d want to use a GlobalKey.

Her article includes a gif demo of an app called "Using GlobalKey to ReuseWidget" but does not provide source code (probably because it's too trivial). You can also see a quick video demo here, starting at 8:30 mark: https://youtu.be/kn0EOS-ZiIc?t=510

How do I implement her demo? Where do I define the GlobalKey variable and how/where do I use it? Basically for example, I want to display a counter that counts up every second, and have it on many different screens. Is that something GlobalKey can help me with?

Answer 1

The most common use-case of using GlobalKey to move a widget around the tree is when conditionally wrapping a "child" into another widget like so:

Widget build(context) {
  if (foo) {
    return Foo(child: child);
  }
  return child;
}

With such code, you'll quickly notice that if child is stateful, toggling foo will make child lose its state, which is usually unexpected.

To solve this, we'd make our widget stateful, create a GlobalKey, and wrap child into a KeyedSubtree.

Here's an example:

class Example extends StatefulWidget {
  const Example({Key key, this.foo, this.child}) : super(key: key);

  final Widget child;
  final bool foo;

  @override
  _ExampleState createState() => _ExampleState();
}

class _ExampleState extends State<Example> {
  final key = GlobalKey();

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    final child = KeyedSubtree(key: key, child: widget.child);

    if (widget.foo) {
      return Foo(child: child);
    }
    return child;
  }
}