Develop Reference

Is it okay to use shared preferences for big data objects?

I know there are some topics and posts about this question, but i want to have an individual feedback.
So in my app i use one shared preferences (file) and gson to store a list of objects, containing big amount of data. So my shared preference file is about 5 MB big and contains ca 1 Mio characters. I know this sounds not really good, but my app works perfectly. No long loading or saving times.
I choose this method, because i ONLY want to store the data, when my app will be closed and between app starts.
I know really good, that shared prefs is not a good way and actually meant for saving small strings for preferences.
So do i have to change this method or is it "okay"? Or does someone know a good solution, which is easy to use and understand, because for me sqlite is difficult and hard to use. Or is there a easy way to store an object into sql? (Maybe a library or a method??)
Thank you in advanced!

Rule of thumb: As long as it works does not necessarily mean it's good. Said that, SQLite is a perfectly valid solution for android applications. There is also a handy developer guide on how to save data with SQLite, but the recommended approach is actually to use the Room Persistence Library.

No, it is not meant for big data objects. For that for example you can use SQLite internal database

for temporary bases it is good for store a data in shared preference. If you want to store a big data then you have to use SqLite to store your data in your device.

Sharedpreferences Vs SQLite for large data without searching

I know that SQLite is technically designed for large amount of data when SharedPreferences are easier and faster for simple data types.
I want to store simple true false boolean for every day in a year. This means I either have to create 3 dimensional json and store it as string in shared preferences (or rather to dimensional array with year as key) or create table with year month and data as separate columns (or it could be simple date column... that being said I can also use "YYYY-MM-DD" as key in sharedPreferences for 365 booleans).
Now here's the question. Should I use more complex SQLite database for storing this simple data if I'm 100% sure I won't need any searching/grouping/selecting by special parameter capabilities. Because it seems to me that if I need to store simple boolean (even in case of 365+ booleans total) I should use SharedPreferences since it's a faster solution. But it just seems kind of wrong to me since I'm not sure whether SharedPreferences are supposed to store this much variables.
Add:
These booleans are stored locally only for offline load or rather faster access to from user perspective. These 1|0 values are stored on server for each app user so even if I would do some complex work with data, I'm not sure if I need to do it on a phone.

shared preferences can take 365 values .Max size of shared preferences is about 1.4mb according to this.How ever share prefs are generally used to save very small amount of data like volume or user settings. I would recommend you to go with sqlite database.It take some time to set it up but it would worth the time spent

Storing your data in shared prefs may seem like a good idea, in fact it will just work fine, but it's taking an easy way. You never know what could you possibly need in the future. Your requirements are fulfilled at the moment, but it does not scale in any way. In general it's worth investing a little time and set up things properly and benefit in a long run.
Of course if you are doing some rapid prototyping or a quick demo it's a different story.
Setting a "complex db" or whatever does not have to be time consuming. Try Realm it's really fast.

Use sharedPreferences or a Database for "one row" of data

I need persistent storage for my application for a certain activity. I was going to initially use a database table with 5 columns for holding the data I needed, but then I thought that maybe using sharedPreferences may be lighter weight in this case. So my question essentially is, if I am going to use a database for a single entry, should I just use sharedPreferences because I know databases are known for being a bit heavy.

If you just want to store the 5 values, then using SharedPreference might be preferable. It is also faster than using database. In addition to allow persisting key-value pairs, SharedPreference also supports saving sets and ArrayList.
See Save ArrayList to SharedPreferences. So storing an array in the ShraredPrefernce will suffice.
If you have more structured data, then using database might be better to manage. To know more about when SharedPreference would be good to use and when SQL Lite database, Pros and Cons of SQLite and Shared Preferences question is a good read. Hope this helps.

Yes, sharedPreferences works great for what you are trying to do. It's lightweight and needs the least amount of code to meet your requirement.

How many Shared Preferences is too many?

I am writing a game and storing almost all active game data (stats, location etc...) in shared preferences.
This will, when all is said and done result in over 100 shared preferences used by my game. Of course the majority of those stored values are small integers or Boolean.
Since I don't need to do any sorting on the stored data, I don't really see a need to use a database.... unless there is some distinct advantage that I am not aware of.
Is there any reason why Shared Preferences should NOT be used in this way? Performance issues? Data Integrity issues? Anything?
Thanks in advance!

If the values remain small, and you don't need them to be structured (like if you have user profiles or something), then Shared Preferences should be just fine. 100 ints only amounts to 400 bytes, so even if the Shared Preferences were stored in memory, it's not a big deal.

There is no limit on the number of shared preferences (except for storage space), but these are currently written as a single XML file for the entire shared preference object, so you
don't want to go crazy with how much you put there. 100 preferences shouldnt be an issue, and it allows a quicker and simpler access to data compared to databases or flat files etc.

It is actually an xml file. In your case, there is certainly no problem for your concerns.

Is using Android shared preferences for storing large amounts of data a good idea?

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

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.

TL;DR; Don't use shared prefs for large storage, use a DB instead (but if it works for now and you're in a rush do it later)
I wouldn't personally recommend it since the system will keep an in-memory copy of all shared prefs for your app. So if you throw a lot of data in there your memory usage will be affected. That said, and depending on the data format (whether you can use it as is and use the key to find it directly - if you just store a huge JSON object that you then have to parse or if you have to get all shared prefs to then do a linear search for the one you really need, there's little benefit in either case) and how often you have to access it, it might be faster to lookup than a file or a database since it's already in memory. It also provides the benefit of being threadsafe (a SQL DB would be as well since DBs get locked when accessed) as opposed to a file where you would have to deal with that on your own.
Hope this helps.