Forem: Innovate Nest Labs

Build Enterprise-Grade Flutter Dashboards in Minutes 🚀 (What’s New in NRB 3.0.3)

Innovate Nest Labs — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:42:49 +0000

If you’ve ever tried to build a complex, responsive data table in Flutter, you know the struggle.

Wrestling with DataTable to get sticky headers, dynamic column sizing, horizontal scrolling, and pagination can quickly turn a simple admin panel into a multi-day headache. And when your client asks, "Can we add a pie chart and an export-to-PDF button?", you usually have to hunt down three different heavy libraries just to make it work.

That’s exactly why we built NRB (Nexora Report Builder).

Today, we are thrilled to announce NRB Version 3.0.3, our biggest update yet, turning nrb from a powerful table builder into a complete Enterprise Dashboard UI Toolkit.

🌟 The Big Feature: Inject ANY Custom Widget into your Tables

Since day one, developers have loved nrb for its ease of use when rendering text and numbers. But a modern dashboard needs more than just text. It needs action buttons, colorful status badges, user avatars, and progress bars.

In v3.0.3, we are introducing the NrbCustomWidgetCell.

You are no longer limited to strings. You can now pass any Flutter widget directly into your table grid without breaking the responsive layout, sticky headers, or export functionality.

💻 Example: Adding Status Badges and Action Buttons

// Building a row in NRB 3.0.3
List<ReportCell> _buildRow(Employee data) {
  return [
    TextCell(itemContent: data.name),
    TextCell(itemContent: data.department),

    // 🔥 NEW: Inject a custom Flutter Widget for the Status!
    NrbCustomWidgetCell(
      exportText: data.status, // Fallback text for PDF/Excel exports
      child: Container(
        padding: const EdgeInsets.symmetric(horizontal: 12, vertical: 4),
        decoration: BoxDecoration(
          color: data.isActive ? Colors.green.shade100 : Colors.red.shade100,
          borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(4),
        ),
        child: Text(
          data.status,
          style: TextStyle(color: data.isActive ? Colors.green : Colors.red),
        ),
      ),
    ),

    // 🔥 NEW: Inject a Delete Icon Button!
    NrbCustomWidgetCell(
      exportText: "Action",
      child: IconButton(
        icon: const Icon(Icons.delete, color: Colors.red),
        onPressed: () => deleteUser(data.id),
      ),
    ),
  ];
}

Note: We even included an exportText property! When your user downloads the table as an Excel or PDF file, nrb knows exactly what text to print in place of your custom UI widget.

📈 Stop Importing Heavy Chart Libraries: New Analytics Widgets

Admin panels aren't just tables; they are visual stories. To save you from bloating your app with massive third-party charting dependencies, nrb now ships with beautiful, animated, physics-based charts built natively in Flutter.

With this update, we’ve added highly requested enterprise charts:

1. NrbComboChart (Dual-Axis Mastery)

Need to compare revenue (currency) against total active users (volume) over time? The Combo Chart lets you overlay a sleek bezier line chart directly on top of a bar chart, complete with dual Y-axes and interactive tooltips.

2. NrbMultiDonutChart

A massive upgrade from standard pie charts. Create beautiful, multi-segmented rings with automatically generated side and bottom legends. Just pass your data and set showSideLegend: true!

NrbMultiDonutChart(
  size: 180,
  strokeWidth: 35.0,
  showLabels: true, // Shows % inside the ring!
  showSideLegend: true, // Auto-generates a clean UI legend
  slices: [
    NrbPieSlice(value: 55.0, color: Colors.blue, label: "Web Apps"),
    NrbPieSlice(value: 35.0, color: Colors.green, label: "Mobile Apps"),
  ],
  centerContent: const Text("90", style: TextStyle(fontSize: 24)),
)

3. NrbStackedBarChart

Perfect for visualizing budget breakdowns, team allocations, or nested categories over time.

4. Interactive Trend Cards

Dashboards need top-level KPIs. Use the new NrbTrendCard to display key metrics. It includes built-in up/down trend arrows and a smooth "bounce" animation when tapped.

🛠️ Why Developers Love NRB

If you are new to the Nexora Report Builder, here is what you get out of the box:

📱 Truly Responsive: Columns auto-measure their content (wrap_content) and expand proportionally to fill available screen space.
📌 Complex Nested Headers: Build main headers, sub-headers, and sticky left-side columns (like Excel-style freeze panes) in minutes.
💰 Built-in Number Formatting: Automatically format raw numbers into International or Indian comma separation schemas (10,99,493.50).
📥 Premium Native Exporting: Instantly download your exact table grid to PDF, Excel (.xlsx), or Word, or trigger the native OS share dialog.

🚀 Get Started Today

Drop the old, rigid DataTable. Give your users the smooth, enterprise-grade reporting experience they deserve.

📦 Install via pub.dev:

flutter pub add nrb

🔗 Check out the interactive Web Demo: nrb Demo Live

📖 Read the Docs: pub.dev/packages/nrb

Have feature requests or feedback? Let us know in the comments below or open an issue on our GitHub! Happy coding! 💙💻

Building Complex "Excel-Style" Dashboards in Flutter: Tables, Charts, and Exports

Innovate Nest Labs — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:41:51 +0000

Live Demo: NRB_DEMO_INL

When you transition from building consumer-facing Flutter apps to enterprise software (ERPs, CRM, Financial Tools), you quickly run into a major roadblock: heavy data visualization.

Clients inevitably ask for "Excel-style" features. They want massive datasets, frozen left columns (sticky headers), nested sub-headers, editable cells, and a beautiful KPI dashboard sitting right on top of it.

If you've tried building this, you know the pain. You install one package for charts, another for exporting, and then spend a week writing custom ScrollControllers for your tables.

After spending weeks syncing controllers on a recent project, I realized the community needed a better way.

Enter nrb (Nexora Report Builder)

I built the nrb package to be an all-in-one layout engine for heavy data grids and dashboards.

Pub.dev: https://pub.dev/packages/nrb

Template Source Code: https://github.com/mehedisoftdev/nrb_example_template.git

Graph & Charts

Export Features

Nested Header Table

Solving the Layout Nightmare
Here is what nrb handles out of the box without needing extra dependencies:

True Sticky Columns: Keep your row identifiers locked on the left while the user scrolls horizontally through massive datasets. No lag.

Native Animated Charts: Enterprise dashboards need charts. nrb includes physics-animated native charts (Segmented Gauges, Multi-line, Histograms, Scatter plots) so you don't need to install massive graphing libraries.

Editable Grids & Exports: It supports TextFieldCells, turning a static report into an editable form that can be extracted to Excel, PDF, or Word with one method call using the premium API.

Get Started in 5 Minutes
I believe the best way to learn a package is to read a working project. I've published a completely free, open-source Enterprise Dashboard Template using nrb.

You can watch the video walkthrough of the code here: https://youtu.be/dppfUyO7vW8

Stop fighting with custom scroll controllers and bloated pubspec files. Grab the template from GitHub, and if it saves you a headache on your next project, consider leaving a like on pub.dev!
Official link: Innovate Nest Labs

Building Complex, Excel-Style Data Tables with PDF & Excel Exports in Flutter 📊

Innovate Nest Labs — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:41:08 +0000

Live Demo: NRB_DEMO_INL

If you have ever been tasked with building an enterprise dashboard, an inventory tracker, or a financial report in Flutter, you already know the struggle.

Flutter’s built-in DataTable and Table widgets are fantastic for simple lists. But the moment your client asks for nested sub-headers, sticky "freeze-pane" columns, inline editing, and PDF/Excel exports, you are usually looking at weeks of custom UI architecture.

I got frustrated dealing with this exact problem, so I built a robust solution: nrb (Nexora Report Builder).

What is nrb?

nrb is a customizable, highly responsive Flutter table widget builder designed specifically for complex data visualization and structured data-entry UIs.

Here is a breakdown of what it handles out of the box:

📌 Complex Nested Headers: Build top-level main headers with multiple sub-headers underneath, plus sticky left-side columns that stay locked while scrolling horizontally.
📱 Fully Responsive & Resizable: Columns auto-measure their content (wrap_content) to fill available space. Users can even double-click edges to auto-fit or drag to manually resize columns.
✍️ Editable Data Grids: Mix static TextCells with interactive TextFieldCells. This turns a static report into a massive, scrollable data-entry form.
🔄 Instant Data Extraction: Wrap your table with a ReportController to extract all grid data instantly into a 2D array via a Submit action.
💰 Built-in Number Formatting: Easily format numbers with International or Indian comma separation, along with granular rounding rules using the built-in NRBNumberFormatter.

The Superpower: Native PDF, Excel, & Word Exports 📥

Building the UI is only half the battle; enterprise users always want to download their data.

nrb comes with a built-in, interactive Floating Action Button (FAB) that triggers backend-driven exports of your perfectly formatted grids to Excel (.xlsx), PDF, and Word. It even integrates directly with the device's native sharing dialogs (via share_plus).

(Note: The UI package is open-source under a custom license, while the file generation utilizes the premium Innovate Nest Labs API. However, we have included a free demo tier so you can test the export functionality immediately!)

How to use it

1. Add the dependency:

dependencies:
  nrb: ^[latest_version]

2. Build your grid:

Setting up a complex table is as simple as defining your headers and passing your data matrix to the ReportMaker widget.

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:nrb/nrb.dart';

class EnterpriseDashboard extends StatelessWidget {
  final ReportController _reportController = ReportController();

  final List<HeaderCell> headers = [
    HeaderCell(text: "Financial Overview", span: 3, backgroundColor: Colors.green),
  ];

  final List<SubHeaderCell> subHeaders = [
    SubHeaderCell(text: "Target", backgroundColor: Colors.green),
    SubHeaderCell(text: "Actual", backgroundColor: Colors.green),
    SubHeaderCell(text: "Growth %", backgroundColor: Colors.green),
  ];

  final leftColumns = [
    TextCell(itemContent: "Q1 - 2026", backgroundColor: Colors.blue[200]),
    TextCell(itemContent: "Q2 - 2026", backgroundColor: Colors.blue[200]),
  ];

  final tableData = [
    [
      TextCell(itemContent: "1500000", isAmount: true, numberFormatType: CellNumberFormat.indian),
      TextCell(itemContent: "1250000", isAmount: true, numberFormatType: CellNumberFormat.indian),
      TextFieldCell(initialValue: "83.33%"), // Editable!
    ],
    // ... more rows
  ];

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(title: const Text('Enterprise Dashboard')),
      body: ReportMaker(
        headers: headers,
        subHeaders: subHeaders,
        leftColumn: leftColumns,
        tableData: tableData,
        stickyHeaderLabel: "Quarter",

        // --- EXPORT FEATURES ---
        controller: _reportController,
        enableDownload: true,          
        showDownloadFloatingButton: true, 

        // 💡 Use these exact credentials to test the Free Export Demo:
        packageName: "com.innovatenestlabs.demoapp", 
        apiKey: "", 
        reportName: "Financial Report",
      ),
    );
  }
}

Try it out!

If you are building dashboards, financial apps, or any software that requires heavy data visualization, drop nrb into your project and let it handle the heavy lifting.

🔗 Check out the full package on pub.dev: https://pub.dev/packages/nrb