Flutter – How to supply an initial value to a text field

Here's a jQuery solution:

$.fn.selectRange = function(start, end) {
    if(end === undefined) {
        end = start;
    }
    return this.each(function() {
        if('selectionStart' in this) {
            this.selectionStart = start;
            this.selectionEnd = end;
        } else if(this.setSelectionRange) {
            this.setSelectionRange(start, end);
        } else if(this.createTextRange) {
            var range = this.createTextRange();
            range.collapse(true);
            range.moveEnd('character', end);
            range.moveStart('character', start);
            range.select();
        }
    });
};

With this, you can do

$('#elem').selectRange(3,5); // select a range of text
$('#elem').selectRange(3); // set cursor position

• JsFiddle
• JsBin

You can't use initialValue and controller at the same time. So, a better way is to use controller because its constructor does provide you initial value that you can set.

Here is an example.

// In class level 
final controller = TextEditingController(text: "Your initial value");

Widget build(BuildContext context) {
  return TextFormField(
    controller: controller, 
    // ...
  );
}

In order to track the value entered by the user you can then use

controller.text