Instant HTML5 Local Storage How-to

by Alex Libby

In Detail

The use of cookies to store information in a browser has been around for over a decade; its simplicity has led to its use in a variety of applications, such as online shopping baskets, but which has also lead to some inherent drawbacks in terms of security and use. HTML5 LocalStorage brings much needed additional functionality to your browser, allowing you to store more useful information that you can later reference in your websites.

"Instant HTML5 Local Storage How-to" is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step exercises, which will help you take advantage of the power of the LocalStorage standard, and give you a good grounding in incorporating it into current or future website projects.

This book looks at how you can incorporate the HTML5 LocalStorage standard into your websites, using the power of modern browsers to store useful information that can be referenced at any time without recourse to the server.

You will also learn how to test for browser capability, and when the browser platform being used requires that you fall back to using cookies. We will also take a look at how you can store more relevant content, such as images or content from arrays, even though the normal standard requires content to be stored in string format. You will also learn how you can make content available offline using application caching, as well as how to incorporate LocalStorage into a plugin using jQuery that you can then incorporate into your sites in the future.

We will also look at some real-life examples, where "Instant HTML5 Local Storage How-to" will take you through how you could incorporate LocalStorage into your sites; we’ll take a look at code you can simply add to a site, or use as a development platform for your own future projects.

Approach

Filled with practical, step-by-step instructions and clear explanations for the most important and useful tasks. Get the job done and learn as you go. Step-by-step recipes to get to grips with the LocalStorage standard.

Who this book is for

This book is great for those who maintain sites that use cookies in some form or another, and who want to learn how to take advantage of the LocalStorage standard to improve browser security and store more relevant information that can be retrieved at some point in the future, without recourse to the server.

80 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Petros · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a very well and clear written book, which provides an easy to understand introduction to the LocalStorage technology.

Each chapter deals with a new receipt and moves the reader step by step deeper to this HTML5 feature understanding.

Clarifies the difference between LocalStorage and SessionStorage, and make a comparison between the old fashioned cookies and this fresh approach.

Recipes not stands to pure JS usage of LocalStorage but combining it with the popular jQuery, Modernizr and other useful libraries and techniques, such as store.js, cache manifest etc., which make the LocalStorage usage more easy, very powerful and bypassing a lot of problems. Also learn you how to use JSON to store objects, arrays, TTL and images in LocalStorage.

Except of all these, considered the use of LocalStorage in the mobile field, at offline web applications usage and with well-targeted examples for LocalStorage integration in CMS and forms.

Summarize all these, “Instant HTML5 Local Storage how-to”, is nice a book for web developers with HTML and JavaScript knowledge, who wants a fast track, based on practical examples, introduction to the LocalStorage technology.

[Michael Sypes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Sypes This book offers a nice primer on the use of the HTML5 Local Storage options, including LocalStorage and SessionStorage. There are some simple projects, explaining the use of basic CRUD operations, including counters, and storage/retrieval of form inputs.
There is certainly enough basic information to get you started on the use of this new technology, and helpful hints for more advanced concepts, like local storage of images. I was disappointed, however, by the amount of pages devoted to CSS prettifying of the projects, which did nothing to advance the topic at hand. That aside, this is certainly worth the read to get yourself started using local storage techniques.