Hello there,
so far I had a great experience using Expo (managed workflow) to build apps that consume data provided by an API. Thanks to the Expo team, for proving this amazing product.
For a new app (basically an almanac/lexicon to be used in areas w/o internet connection) I’m evaluating available options for shipping that data (about 200MB) with the app.
In my tests, expo-sqlite did not quite prove to be up to the task. What it does on first app start is basically copy the database delivered with the app to ${FileSystem.documentDirectory}/SQLite/${name} and then read from it.
Even with a small test database, the connection that gets opened on first load, often has only a blank database on different devices, as also documented by Jonathan Holloway here. A workaround is to always force reload the app using expo-updates, which looks to the user as if the app crashes and restarts.
Did some of you have had success with shipping larger datasets ahead of time using Expo managed workflow, maybe with other embedded database solutions? Or is this a use case Expo (currently) can not really support?