How to compare two app versions in Flutter?

Question

I was trying to compare the two app versions in Flutter:

final v1 = "1.0.0";
final v2 = "1.0.1";

How do I state which version is bigger than the other?

Answer 1

Compare them as integers!

A cool solution is to convert each version to an exponential integer so that we can compare them simply as integers!

void main() {
  String v1 = '1.2.3', v2 = '1.2.11';
  int v1Number = getExtendedVersionNumber(v1); // return 102003
  int v2Number = getExtendedVersionNumber(v2); // return 102011
  print(v1Number >= v2Number);
}

int getExtendedVersionNumber(String version) {
  List versionCells = version.split('.');
  versionCells = versionCells.map((i) => int.parse(i)).toList();
  return versionCells[0] * 100000 + versionCells[1] * 1000 + versionCells[2];
}

Checkout this running example on Dartpad.