Android Sharedpreferences Limitations

Android SharedPreferences limitations?

SharedPreferences are written to xml files, so the maximum size of a file on Android is how large a SharedPreferences xml file can be. I can safely say that 40 integer values will not be a problem.

The maximum size of a value in a SharedPreferences file is limited to the maximum size of the value you are attempting to store. (Meaning you can't put a String value that is longer than Strings can be in Java.)

The only thing I would suggest is making sure to batch the edits as much as possible (meaning don't .commit() each change) and also don't create a new editor for each change. (These are just good practices.)

SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences(PREFS_FILE_NAME, 0);
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = settings.edit();
editor.putInt("firstValue", mFirst);
editor.putInt("secondValue", mSecond);
editor.putInt("thirdValue", mThird);

// Commiting the edits
editor.commit();

Shared Preferences limit

Since SharedPreferences are stored in an XML file, and therefore lacks the strong transaction support of SQLite, I would not recommend storing "100KBS" in SharedPreferences.

That being said, the lowest size limit that I am aware of will be your amount of free heap space, as SharedPreferences reads that entire XML file's contents into memory.

Android SharedPreferences Limit

All shared prefs are stored in /data/data/[package name]/shared_prefs/[app name].xml, so i think there's no limit based on aechitecture.

I don't know practical limit but i think it's enough for you..

Check Shared Preference for your reference.

 should I use SQLite or SharedPreferences. 

It is far better to use SQLite if you need to store values that will changes periodically.
Also you can store more amount of data..

Disadvantages of using SharedPreferences?

If you try to do anything complicated with SharedPreferences quickly becomes very tedious; you can only store primitive types and it's a simple key/value system. So, there are no disadvantages per se, but SharedPreferences are meant for lightweight storage of simple data.

Shared Preferences - max length of a single value

By Romain Guy From the Question Asked Here,

Whatever the maximum length of a Java string is. So something like
Integer.MAX_VALUE chars.

I suppose while SharedPreference is an XML file stored with One Tag if you store only One Pair/Object.
So there is no limit to write String in that if you think like you are writing in a file..(Theoretically)

But Actually what happens is that, while you are assigning value to SharedPreference using put/get function at that time you Reading/Writting value in String Object..so the limit becomes to store value at one time equal to Size limit of String Object of Java.

So while writting the code: Limit of SharedPreference String Size = Java String Object Size Limit(Practically)

Android sharedpreferences size limit

logically there is no limit for sharedpreferences because it saved inside your app look at this answer i think its perfectly right

this

What's the maximum size for an Android shared preference value?

All shared prefs are stored in /data/data/[package name]/shared_prefs/[app name].xml, so i think there's no limit based on architecture.

I don't know practical limit but I think it's enough for you.

Using maximum number of Shared preferences

Depends upon how many preferences you are going to store. I prefer sqlite when need readability, its easy to read data in columns, whereas shared preferences are in xml file.

You can look at code it might help to decide.

https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/cb4d3ec1ea446fc9ce51514cbf5b16da0ec0fa0f/core/java/android/app/SharedPreferencesImpl.java

Also it depends on your logic how frequent you commit changes, when you read you are reading from Map so will be in memory and faster but memory is limited.

I tested committing 1000 different elements read/write in sqlite and shared preferences and surprisingly shared preferences was 10 times faster than sqlite! though I had cache while reading sqlite.
So I would say performance test you have to do with your own requirements.

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