Maintain a database on iPad using HTML5

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1

I have a client requirement to manage data locally on an iPad with no network connection, any advice would be welcome please…

Constraints:

  1. No network connection when the iPad is out on site.
  2. Cannot install a native iOS app.

Preferred wrapper:

  1. Locally installed HTML5 file.

Requirement:

  1. The HTML5 page, presumably using JavaScript, must be able to save form data to the iPad on a button click event.
  2. The User needs a facility to subsequently upload the data to a central web server, either with network connection or by cable.

What is the best way the achieve this ?

Thanks very much…

2

What is the best way the achieve this ?

TBH, I suspect there’s no good way to do that on an iPad—at least offline. These are pretty limited devices. They are really for low tech folk to browse the web, read books and play games. The client is better off using a laptop like a Macbook Air etc.

In the future, if iOS ever supports things like indexedDB, there may be some hope, but it sounds too ambitious right now, though I’m happy to be set straight.

EDIT
Web storage is supported in iOS, so perhaps that’s an option: http://caniuse.com/namevalue-storage

3

The best way to achieve this is an app, period end of story. The app could fundamentally be a html5 container for what it’s worth.

You could try and set something up where you could hit a web page and then use the html5 local storage options to cache data but you’d still need to reconnect to upload things. Good luck when a user hits the back button. Another implementation option would be to run the web server locally and handle it that way.

4
  1. No network connection when the iPad is out on site.

I’m not sure what you mean here… w/ no network how does it connect to db?

Anyways, you should definitely consider to use ExtJS Touch to do the development.