Android - Persistent DomStorage in Webview after App Close
As technology continues to advance, more and more users are turning to mobile applications to meet their daily needs. And with the rise of mobile apps, the use of webviews has become increasingly popular. Webviews allow developers to display web pages within their apps, providing a seamless browsing experience for users.
One of the challenges faced by developers when using webviews is the persistence of data. In particular, the persistence of DomStorage, which is essentially a storage mechanism used by web browsers to store data locally. When using webviews in an Android app, the DomStorage is reset every time the app is closed, which can be problematic for applications that rely on this data.
To address this issue, Android introduced the concept of persistent DomStorage in webviews. This feature allows developers to store data in the DomStorage that persists even after the app is closed. Let's take a closer look at how this works.
To enable persistent DomStorage in your Android app, you first need to initialize the webview and enable DomStorage by calling the setDomStorageEnabled() method. This will enable the webview to use the DomStorage for storing data. Next, you need to set the DomStorage path using the setDatabasePath() method. This will specify the location where the data will be stored.
Now, to ensure that the data persists even after the app is closed, you need to override the onDestory() method in your activity and call the webview's freeMemory() and clearCache() methods. This will free up any unused memory and clear the cache, which will help in persisting the data.
In addition to these steps, you also need to set the cache mode to LOAD_DEFAULT in the webview's settings. This will ensure that the webview loads the cached data when the app is opened again, rather than fetching it from the server.
With these steps in place, your Android app will now have persistent DomStorage in the webview. This means that any data stored in the DomStorage will be retained even after the app is closed, providing a smoother browsing experience for your users.
But why is this feature important? Well, there are various use cases where persistent DomStorage can be beneficial. For example, in e-commerce apps, users can add items to their cart and continue shopping without losing their cart data when the app is closed. Similarly, in news apps, users can save articles for offline reading, and the data will be retained even after the app is closed.
In conclusion, persistent DomStorage in webviews is an essential feature for Android apps that use webviews. It allows for a better user experience and makes it easier for developers to store and retrieve data without worrying about it being reset every time the app is closed. So, if you're developing an Android app that uses webviews, be sure to implement persistent DomStorage for a smoother and more seamless browsing experience.
