Flutter: Programatically perform a button click

Question

How can you programatically perform a button click in Flutter? I basically want to bind a number of buttons to keys on the keyboard, the most important part is that after a key is pressed the corresponding button the visual state of the button is triggered to inform the user which button was pressed.

I am aware you can invoke the onTap function, but that by itself doesn't update the visual state of button. Is there a way to simulate this kind of behavior, I tried to look into MaterialStateController but doesn't feel like it's the right approach.

Answer 1

I discovered that _InkWellResponseState (internal-) classes have a function called simulateTap. The function is bound against ActivateIntent and by default this intend is fired whenever the user presses Enter or Space

class SimActivateIntent extends ActivateIntent {
  const SimActivateIntent (this.model);
  final FocusNode model;
}

class SimActivateAction extends Action<SimActivateIntent> {
  SimActivateAction ();
  @override
  void invoke(covariant SimActivateIntentintent) {
    Actions.maybeInvoke(intent.model.context!, const ActivateIntent());
  }
}

With the intends listed above one can invoke the ActivateIntent on a specific object and simulate a button press. They can bound into the application using Shortcuts & Actions classes.

Map<ShortcutActivator, Intent> get defaultShortcuts {
    return <ShortcutActivator, Intent>{
       const SingleActivator(LogicalKeyboardKey.backspace):
          SimActivateIntent(digitBackspace),
    }
}

@override
Widget build(BuildContext context)
{
    return Shortcuts(
      shortcuts: defaultShortcuts,
      child: Actions(
      actions: <Type, Action<Intent>>{
        SimActivateIntent: SimActivateAction(),
      },
      child: ...
    ));
}