Question

So I inherited this Android project from someone else. The code currently seems to be storing huge amounts of data (that should really belong to an SQLite database) into the shared preferences. I’m very uncomfortable with that part of the code and want to start using the sqlite database. But I am still unable to justify to myself the time it would take especially if it comes with no immediate benefits.

Of course I’m eventually going to move it to sqlite but since I’m kinda on a tight deadline I was wondering if this is worth something doing now or later.

Any thoughts and comments on storing large amounts of data in shared preferences would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

If it works now then you can definitely leave it. You are correct that the large amounts of data should go into the database. If nothing else, you’ll have an easier time of querying for data.

Further research has found this post suggesting that you won’t have any major problems with a large amount of data in your Shared Prefs. You could, however, have performance issues since the single Shared Pref XML file will have to be read to get any pref while with a database you only have to grab what you need as you need it.