Best way to save a little amount of data

Question

I'm currently developing an Android application where OAuth will be in use. In order to use OAuth, I need to be able to save the consumer's private key to access the protected resources. My question is, where would I want to save this tiny piece of data? I know that for most Android applications, data would be stored in a SQLite database. But for only a little bit of information, a string containing random letters and numbers, would SQLite be the best way to go? Or would it just be better to write the data to a file and save it on the file system? I don't know what the best practice for this would be, so hopefully I'll be able to get some insight.

Thanks a bunch guys!

Answer 1

I would save it in a file on the internal storage or in shared preferences .

Never the less you should encrypt the key for security reasons. On a rooted oder developer device it is no problem to access any file on the system.

Answer 2

You have a lot of choices:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html

However, if you just want to save one String (the OAuth key), I would suggest shared preferences. Example:

SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences(PREFS_NAME, 0);
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = settings.edit();
editor.putString("oauthKey", yourOAuthKey);

// Commit the edits!
editor.commit();

Answer 3

SharedPrefs is much easier to work with than an sqlite database - especially for something so simple as you describe.

Answer 4

I guess a SharedPreference would do just fine.