LitBackupService

What is LitBackupService?

LitBackupService is a Flutter package allowing you to create and restore backups using JSON files. This package does implement a very simple persistent (key-value pair) storage on local devices and should only be used as a secondary storage solution (such as for backuping other databases).

It does contain an abstract model class to provide a basic structure how backupable model classes should be defined. The JSON serialization should therefore be performed on each model class individually, as the models varies in structure.

Platform Support

Android
✔️

This package is currently only supported on Android devices.

Screenshots

Example HomeScreen	Example HomeScreen

Required Permissions on Android

In order to read and write outside the app-specific directories, additional permissions must be granted. These must be enabled on the AndroidManifest.xml of your app located on android/app/src/main.

// Android devices prior to Android 11
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
// Optional on Android devices from Android 11
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

Enabling the required permissions will be done using the BackupStorage's requestPermissions() method, which utilizes the permission_handler package.

More recent releases of Android are managing storage permissions on the file's purpose and have some restrictions. In order to access already existing backup files created using previous installations on Android 10 and higher, the MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions must be granted. The current installation won't be able to access them directly due to the altered file privileges. This must be specified on the BackupStorage's useManageExternalStoragePermission flag. This practice is discouraged. Use the BackupStorage's pickBackupFile() methods to allow picking a specific file without the need of additional permissions.

Backup Location

Backups are stored on the device's Media directories by default. But custom file paths are supported. The Media directories will include the Documents folder (default) on /storage/emulated/0/Documents/ or the Download folder on /storage/emulated/0/Download/.

We recommend to use the Documents folder as backup location if possible for better security.

But for higher compatibility we recommend to use the Download folder, due to it being available on almost all Android devices.

Getting Started

This project is a starting point for a Dart package, a library module containing code that can be shared easily across multiple Flutter or Dart projects.

For help getting started with Flutter, view our online documentation, which offers tutorials, samples, guidance on mobile development, and a full API reference.

Example app

To get a better understanding for implementing the LitBackupService, we recommend to take a look at the example app provided in the example folder. Feel free to experiment with the app.

Dependencies

LitBackupService uses the following Dart dependencies in order to implement certain features and functionality:

permission_handler - License (Used to request storage access permissions)
file_picker - License (Used to allow platform-specific file picking)

Credits

LitBackupService is made possible thanks to the Flutter Project.

License

Everything else in this repository including the source code is distributed under the BSD 3-Clause license as specified in the LICENSE file.