what's the different between full path and relative path in dart

Question

I develop a flutter app, define serveral models in 'model' package.

Then I declare a class Example in 'model' for example.

model/example.dart

class Example {
  @override
  String toString() {
    return 'class example';
  }
}

test_a.dart

import 'package:example/model/example.dart'

Example testA() {
  return Example()
}

test.dart

import 'model/example.dart'
import 'test_a.dart'

test() {
  Example example = testA();
  if (example is Example) {
    print('this class is Example');
  } else {
    print('$example');
  }
}

I will get output class example

If I change from import 'model/example.dart' to import 'package:example/model/example.dart' in test.dart, then I will get the output this class is Example.

So I'm confused what is different between the full path and relative path in dart.

Can you please change the location (paths) of the files like `test_a.dart` so that it's clear where they ares stored related to `pubspec.yaml`? `test_a.dart` sounds like it might be in `test/test_a.dart` but I guess it's `lib/test_a.dart`, it's just confusing. — Günter Zöchbauer, Jun 07 '18 at 06:42

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 09 '18 at 23:28

package imports

'package:... imports work from everywhere to import files from lib/*.

relative imports

Relative imports are always relative to the importing file. If lib/model/test.dart imports 'example.dart', it imports lib/model/example.dart.

If you want to import test/model_tests/fixture.dart from any file within test/*, you can only use relative imports because package imports always assume lib/.

This also applies for all other non-lib/ top-level directories like drive_test/, example/, tool/, ...

lib/main.dart

There is currently a known issue with entry-point files in lib/* like lib/main.dart in Flutter. https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/issues/33076

Dart always assumed entry-point files to be in other top-level directories then lib/ (like bin/, web/, tool/, example/, ...). Flutter broke this assumption. Therefore you currently must not use relative imports in entry-point files inside lib/

what's the different between full path and relative path in dart

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