PKLocalStorage

Version 1.1.0, Kerri Shotts (kerrishotts@gmail.com)

localStorage is not synchronized or flushed to disk during pause events on iOS. Furthermore, no native operations are permitted during a pause event, which means that there is no mechanism, what-so-ever that supports the saving of app state during a pause event in order to prevent data loss should the app be terminated while in the background.

This is described here in the PhoneGap Google Group.

Although incredibly ugly, this plugin attempts to rectify that problem in an easy-to-use plugin. It does two things:

• It can call pause and resume handlers that are guaranteed to execute during the event. That is, you can do any JavaScript you desire during the handler except setTimeout or any native operations. While this initially sounds limiting, it does permit the writing of data to localStorage.
• It will save any changes made to localStorage during these pause events to the app's cache directory in a file named localStorageCache.json. If the app is resumed without an intervening termination, the file is then deleted. But if the app is terminated prior to being resumed, the file is read and loaded back into localStorage. This means that by your app can check localStorage and know that data has been persisted.

Caveats

It would be far better if there was a mechanism by which we could force the sqlite database that backs localStorage to synchronize or flush its contents with/to persistent storage. Instead, the following occurs:

• JSON.stringify(localStorage) - this is a hack from moment one. Should localStorage contain a lot of data, this operation may become problematic.
• JSON.parse(atob(data)) - when starting up, the cached localStorage data is passed over to JavaScript in base 64. This is a second hack on top of the first, but it ensures that the data is transferred without having to worry about escaping symbols. It does double the memory requirements. Therefore, if the cache has stored 5mb of data, then JavaScript is passed a string that's a little over 10mb large. Probably not going to work.
• for ... in - once the data is passed to JavaScript, it is iterated over in order to insert the data into localStorage. If there are a lot of items, this is going to take awhile.
• This plugin does not attempt to do anything should the app be forcibly terminated (or crash) in any other situation. That is to say, this plugin works only with the backgrounding of the application, not the forcible termination of the application.

For the above reasons, this plugin is probably best used in the following situations:

• Games or other apps that don't need to store a lot of user settings, but do want to persist those changes should the application be paused.
• Games or other apps that store their content using the File API (or some other persistent storage) but need a mechanism for tracking any unsaved changes should the app be paused.

Usage

localStorage is persisted by default, with no further action on your part. However, it is important to recognize that the Cordova pause event has probably not fired by the time this plugin runs, and so you can't use it to store data to localStorage.

To do that (or be notified when the app has resumed), do the following:

PKLocalStorage.addPauseHandler ( function () { localStorage["editInProgress"] = someData; } );
PKLocalStorage.addResumeHandler ( function () { localStorage.removeItem("editInProgress"); } );

Do NOT exeute any native operations or any operation that uses setTimeout or the like. They will not execute until the app is resumed.

To remove handlers, you can use removePausehandler and removeResumeHandler.

Repository

Available on Github. Contributions welcome!

LICENSE

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Change Log

1.0.0  First Release
1.1.0  iOS 6 would crash due to lack of base64EncodedStringWithOptions on NSData. Fixed.