---
title: "Flutter Tutorial: building a Flutter chat app"
description: "Developers can construct cross-platform real-time chat applications for iOS, Android, and web by pairing Flutter with Supabase. The architecture relies on Supabase to manage authentication and provide direct SDK access to a Postgres database without requiring custom backend server code. The database schema defines profiles with regex validation constraints and a messages table configured for live subscriptions through Postgres publication settings. Flutter clients capture user input, insert new records into the messages table, handle database exceptions, and format chat bubbles with dynamic timestamps. While this initial setup implements user registration and message broadcasting in a shared room, securing chat rooms requires subsequent row-level security configuration."
---

# Flutter Tutorial: building a Flutter chat app

[Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase) · Tyler Shukert · Jun 30, 2022

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Developers can construct cross-platform real-time chat applications for iOS, Android, and web by pairing Flutter with Supabase. The architecture relies on Supabase to manage authentication and provide direct SDK access to a Postgres database without requiring custom backend server code. The database schema defines profiles with regex validation constraints and a messages table configured for live subscriptions through Postgres publication settings. Flutter clients capture user input, insert new records into the messages table, handle database exceptions, and format chat bubbles with dynamic timestamps. While this initial setup implements user registration and message broadcasting in a shared room, securing chat rooms requires subsequent row-level security configuration.

## Context

Building cross-platform real-time applications across iOS, Android, and web requires a backend database that supports live message synchronization and data persistence without requiring custom backend server development.

## Approach / What changed

The implementation pairs Flutter with Supabase using the supabase\_flutter SDK and Postgres. It configures profiles and messages tables, enables Postgres publication for real-time messaging updates, and writes UI widgets to send and render chat bubbles.

## Takeaways

- Real-time updates for chat messages are enabled on Supabase by adding the messages table to the publication via alter publication supabase\_realtime add table public.messages.
- The Postgres database schema enforces username validation on the profiles table using a check constraint matching alphanumeric characters and underscores between 3 and 24 characters.
- Message submission inserts records into the messages table via supabase.from('messages').insert() and handles database errors with PostgrestException.

**Tags:** [Android](https://yomu.fyi/topic/android), [Authentication](https://yomu.fyi/topic/authentication), [iOS](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ios), [Postgres](https://yomu.fyi/topic/postgres)

- Source: [Supabase](https://supabase.com/blog/flutter-tutorial-building-a-chat-app)
- Source URL: https://supabase.com/blog/flutter-tutorial-building-a-chat-app
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-28T00:00:57.148Z

[Read original post](https://supabase.com/blog/flutter-tutorial-building-a-chat-app)