Better to store array in localstorage or many variables?

Question

Take for example a case where I have thousands of students.

So I'd have an array of objects.

students = [

{ "name":"mickey", "id","1" },
{ "name":"donald", "id","2" }
{ "name":"goofy", "id","3" }
...

];

The way I currently save this into my localstorage is:

localStorage.setItem('students', JSON.stringify(students));

And the way I retrieve this from the localstorage is:

var data = localStorage.getItem('students');
students = JSON.parse(data);    

Now, whenever I make a change to a single student, I must save ALL the students to the localStorage.

students[0].name = "newname";
localStorage.setItem('students', JSON.stringify(students));

I was wondering if it'd be better instead of keeping an array, to maybe have thousands of variables

localStorage.setItem('student1', JSON.stringify(students[0]));
localStorage.setItem('student2', JSON.stringify(students[1]));
localStorage.setItem('student3', JSON.stringify(students[2]));
...

That way a student can get saved individually without saving the rest?

I'll potentially have many "students".. Thousands. So which way is better, array or many variables inside the localstorage?

Note: I know I should probably be using IndexedDB, but I need to use LocalStorage for now. Thanks

Answer 1

For your particular case it would probably be easier to store the students in one localStorage key and using JSON parse to reconstruct your object, add to it, then stringifying it again and it would be easier than splitting it up by each student to different keys.

If you don't have so many data layers that you really need a real local database like IndexedDB, a single key and a JSON string value is probably OK for your case.