Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
37 lines (24 loc) · 2.26 KB

6. Describe the difference between a cookie, sessionStorage and localStorage.md

File metadata and controls

37 lines (24 loc) · 2.26 KB

Describe the difference between a cookie, sessionStorage and localStorage.

localStorage, sessionStorage, and cookies are all client storage solutions.

localStorage and sessionStorage

localStorage and sessionStorage are near identical but the sessionStorage is only available for the duration of the browser session (and is deleted when the tab or window is closed) if the data you are storing needs to be available on an ongoing basis then localStorage is preferable to sessionStorage although you should note both can be cleared by the user so you should not rely on the continuing existence of data in either case.

localStorage and sessionStorage are perfect for persisting non-sensitive data needed within client scripts between pages (for example: preferences, scores in games).

LocalStorage

  1. Web storage can be viewed simplistically as an improvement on cookies, providing much greater storage capacity. Available size is 5MB which considerably more space to work with than a typical 4KB cookie.
  2. The data is not sent back to the server for every HTTP request (HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc) - reducing the amount of traffic between client and server.
  3. The data stored in localStorage persists until explicitly deleted. Changes made are saved and available for all current and future visits to the site.
  4. It works on same-origin policy. So, data stored will only be available on the same origin.

Cookies:

  1. We can set the expiration time for each cookie
  2. The 4K limit is for the entire cookie, including name, value, expiry date etc. To support most browsers, keep the name under 4000 bytes, and the overall cookie size under 4093 bytes.
  3. The data is sent back to the server for every HTTP request (HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc) - increasing the amount of traffic between client and server.

sessionStorage:

  1. It is similar to localStorage.
  2. Changes are only available per window (or tab in browsers like Chrome and Firefox). Changes made are saved and available for the current page, as well as future visits to the site on the same window. Once the window is closed, the storage is deleted The data is available only inside the window/tab in which it was set.