[whatwg] Storage quota introspection and modification

[Jeremy Orlow]

2010/3/10 Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ) <ifette at google.com>

> As I talk with more application developers (both within Google and at
> large), one thing that consistently gets pointed out to me as a problem is
> the notion of the opaqueness of storage quotas in all of the new storage
> mechanisms (Local Storage, Web SQL Database, Web Indexed Database, the
> Filesystem API being worked on in DAP, etc). First, without being able to
> know how large your quota currently is and how much headroom you are using,
> it is very difficult to plan in an efficient manner. For instance, if you
> are trying to sync email, I think it is reasonable to ask "how much space do
> I have," as opposed to just getting halfway through an update and finding
> out that you hit your quota, rolling back the transaction, trying again with
> a smaller subset, realizing you still hit your quota, etc.
>
> I would like to see a method added, for any "storage mechanism", something
> like "GetCurrentQuota()" and "GetCurrentQuotaUsed()". (I specifically don't
> care what they're called or the details, e.g. whether they need to be
> callbacks, I just want to see us address this use case.)
>

I too have heard this plea over and over again.  I've also heard that even
knowing the order of magnitude of headway would be useful.  This is nearly a
deal breaker for a lot of apps.  Having to gracefully handle a quota related
error _every_ single time you do an operation is a big pain.


> Secondly, I think we need a better answer for obtaining a larger quota.
> Let's think for a moment about the use cases -- in most instances, I am
> going to make a decision that I want to use an application offline. (I
> personally would not expect to browse to a site and then just happen to be
> able to use it offline, nor do I expect users to have that expectation or
> experience. Rather, I expect going through some sort of flow like clicking
> something that says "Yes, I want to use Application X offline". At this
> point, I want to get any permissioning issues out of the way. I don't want
> to wait until the data sync to the Web XXX Database starts failing 10
> minutes later to pop up an infobar that is no longer in the user's current
> flow / state of mind, I don't want to then pop up another infobar 30 minutes
> later saying their Filesystem quota is full, etc. I want to be able to get
> this out of the way all at once, at a point in time where I believe the user
> is actually in the mindset / task of deciding that they want to use my web
> application. I specifically do not want to have to deal with 4 different
> infobars, potentially at 4 different points in time, to use an application I
> have decided I want to use.
>
> To that point, I would like to see a method added (presumably that can only
> be called in response to a user action) that would allow my page to request
> a bundle of permissions. I am going to go out on a limb here and include
> geolocation in this bundle. Some sort of a callback type API where I pass in
> a list of permissions that I want, the UA is free to display this to the
> user in whatever mechanism it determines appropriate (if at all -- e.g. if
> the user has already denied geolocation and that's being requested again, as
> a UA i might decide not to present that request). That is, I could pass in
> something like ["LocalStorageQuota", 20*1024*1024 /* 20M */, "WebSQLQuota",
> 1*1024*1024*1024 /* 1GB */, "FileSystemQuota", 10*1024*1024*1024 /* 10GB */,
> "Geolocation", true], and the callback could then (as a convenience)
> indicate the current quota for all of the things that I asked for, so that I
> could figure out whether the user accepted, denied, or accepted and modified
> the request and how I can then proceed (or not proceed). Again, I don't care
> terribly about the details of how the API looks, the above is just meant for
> illustration.
>

I wish you had put this in its own email.  These are really two very
different subjects.

That said, I agree with you...as long as we can do it in a manor that's
completely unobtrusive and not in the "Do you want this app to work: yes or
no" style (where yes implies giving them tons of permissions).  Ideally with
an <input> type.  Perhaps the input could have parameters that give the
"recommended" values and then leave the rest up to the UA to help advise the
user?

J
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