(How) can I increase the quota limit of LocalStorage in Android WebView

Question

I need to increase the default quota limit of the LocalStorage in a Android WebView. Currently I can only use around 2.5MB. When trying to store more data, a quota_exceeded_err (dom exception 22) is raised.

Any ideas or do I have to switch to db/file system ?

Frerichs

Answer 1

We're talking about HTML5 WebStorage DOCS. (update 2023: DOCS)

There is plenty of question on the same theme, only not Android-specific

• HTML5 localStorage size limit for subdomains
• What is the max size of localStorage values?
• HTML5 LocalStorage size

Fact is, that HTML5 WebStorage suffers from different implementation on different platforms.
Desktop and Mobile Platforms & Browsers combinations differs in size of memory (disk space) quota assigned to each website (domain)

And no, you cannot increase/decrease space allocated for your HTML5 application, there is no such option in WebSettings as Android WebKit Settings Java accessor class, neither in WebKit implementation of HTML5 WebStorage as of now.

citation: http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/#disk-space

A mostly arbitrary limit of five megabytes per origin is recommended. Implementation feedback is welcome and will be used to update this suggestion in the future.

If you really need a large space in your HTML5 Application (no matter if it runs through PhonGap, Titanium, Rhodes or another...), I would strictly recommend you to use HTML Web SQL Database

Even if the DOCS say:

This document was on the W3C Recommendation track but specification work has stopped. The specification reached an impasse: all interested implementors have used the same SQL backend (Sqlite), but we need multiple independent implementations to proceed along a standardisation path.

The Web SQL is now only supported way on Android devices (which you do aim in this question) which allows you to increase/decrease space allocation for your data.

Please note the related question:

• HTML5 IndexedDB, Web SQL Database and browser wars

Breeks

thx, I already knew most of this, but was hoping for a miracle ;) so now I will have to switch my application to Web SQL DB ... so be it! – Frerichs

@Frerichs sorry for not bringing out the miracle ;-) – Breeks

Is there no way for the user to increase this limit? – Hypersthene

@MarekSebera How do you actually "increase/decrease space allocation for your data."? This is my exact problem ATM in a hybrid web app. WebSettings seems to be the answer, but I am not sure how... – Jeunesse

@Jeunesse read again, the answer is not WebSettings, but using WebSQL to store data instead of localStorage. – Breeks

@MarekSebera I read that. And I meant WebSQL. In a normal Android web app the limit on WebSQL databases is approximately 8MB. Does this differ in a WebView? – Jeunesse

"you cannot increase/decrease space allocated for your HTML5 application" is this the same case till now? – Crossstaff

@Crossstaff seems so, only thing relevant is, that instead of fixed storage quota, Android WebKit uses HTML5/JS automatic quota management, which should result in less problems with limited storage space. But WebSettings has methods. You can query current quota by https://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/WebStorage.html#getQuotaForOrigin(java.lang.String, android.webkit.ValueCallback<java.lang.Long>) but methods, that previously allowed to set quota, are deprecated since API 18, so you cannot set/decrease/increase quota in any way right now. – Breeks

Answer 2

I just wrote a minimal script for that: https://github.com/DVLP/localStorageDB

The goal is to have a very simple usage with key - value pairs like in localStorage, and take advantage of large size of IndexedDB and it's potential performance gain thanks to it being asynchronous.

Hope you'll find this useful!

Tombola