Local Storage, Session storage, Web storage, web database and cookies in HTML5

html cookies local-storage web-sql session-storage
texai picture texai · Mar 22, 2011 · Viewed 13.7k times · Source

What is the difference between these concepts, and when should I use one in particular? Does this listing also contain different names for the same general concept?

  • HTML5 local storage
  • HTML5 session storage
  • HTML5 web storage
  • HTML5 web database
  • Cookies

Answer

DA. picture DA. · Mar 22, 2011

HTML5 web storage is a generic umbrella term for the new client-side data storage options.

Local Storage is persistent and scoped to the domain. At the moment two flavors are usually mentioned:

  • 'default': stores things in name/value pairs
  • Web SQL (aka Web Database): uses an SQL database

Session Storage is non persistent and scoped only to the current window.

Cookies are the old school way of doing all of the above. Stores name/value pairs per domain.

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