FAQ
Answers to questions specific to ObjectBox for Java and Dart
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Answers to questions specific to ObjectBox for Java and Dart
Last updated
Was this helpful?
ObjectBox comes with full including data classes. And yes, it supports .
Yes. ObjectBox comes with strong relation support and offers features like “eager loading” for optimal performance.
The ObjectBox Gradle plugin only looks for entities in the current module, it does not search library modules. However, you can have a separate database (MyObjectBox file) for each module. Just make sure to pass different database names when building your BoxStore.
It depends. Internally and in , ObjectBox does zero-copy reads. Java objects require a single copy only. However, copying data is only a minor factor in overall performance. In ObjectBox, objects are POJOs (plain objects), and all properties will be properly initialized. Thus, there is no run time penalty for accessing properties and values do not change in unexpected ways when the database updates.
No. The objects you get from ObjectBox are POJOs (plain objects). You are safe to pass them around in threads.
It depends. In most cases no IO operations (which is what ObjectBox does) should be run on the main thread. This avoids (even rare) hangs of your app.
However, in some cases it might be alright. While ObjectBox and the underlying OS and file system can give no hard guarantees, reading (e.g. Box.get(id)) small amounts of data is typically very fast and should have no notable impact on observed performance of your app. This is because in ObjectBox reads, unlike writes, are not blocked by other operations.
ObjectBox supports Android 5.0 (API level 21) or newer and works on most device architectures (armeabi-v7a, arm64-v8a, x86 and x86_64). An Android library is available for Java (also Kotlin) and Flutter projects.
Yes, you can ObjectBox on the desktop/server side. Contact us for details if you are interested in running ObjectBox in client/server mode or containerized!
If you rather have a smaller APK/App Bundle instead of smaller app downloads and updates (e.g. when distributing in other stores) you can override the flag in your AndroidManifest.xml:
More importantly, ObjectBox adds little to the APK method count since it’s mostly written in native code.
Yes. ObjectBox stores all data in a single database file. Thus, you just need to prepare a database file and copy it to the correct location on the first start of your app (before you touch ObjectBox’s API).
The database file is called data.mdb and is typically located in a subdirectory called objectbox (or any name you passed to BoxStoreBuilder). On Android, the DB file is located inside the app’s files directory inside objectbox/objectbox/. Or objectbox/<yourname> if you assigned the custom name <yourname> using BoxStoreBuilder.
In most cases, ObjectBox uses disk space quite optimally. Only once you add more data, the database file grows as required. When you delete data, file areas are marked as unused internally and will be reused by ObjectBox. Note that re-using existing file areas is much more efficient than shrinking and growing the file. In practice, once used file storage will be used again in the future; especially considering that stored data has the tendency to get more over time.
ObjectBox relies on multi-version concurrency storage based on "copy on write". This allows e.g. to read the previous state while a write transaction is active. A counter-intuitive consequence is that deleting data can actually increase disk usage because the old data is still referenced. But of course, forthcoming transactions can reuse the internally reclaimed space.
Non-standard use cases may require a temporary peak in data storage space that is followed by a permanent drop of storage space. To reclaim disk space for those cases, you need to delete the database files and restore them later; e.g. from the cloud or from a second store, which you set up to put the objects you want to keep.
Deleting the database files deletes the contained data permanently. If you want to restore old data, it's your responsibility to backup and restore.
While we don't recommend deleting the entire database, the API offers some methods to do so: first, close() the BoxStore and then delete the database files using BoxStore.deleteAllFiles(objectBoxDirectory). To avoid having to close BoxStore delete files before building it, e.g. during app start-up.
If you believe to have found a bug or missing feature, please create an issue.
ObjectBox supports iOS 12 or newer on 64-bit devices only. An iOS library is available for or projects.
ObjectBox also runs on Linux (x86_64, arm64, armv7), Windows (x86_64) and macOS 10.15 or newer (x86_64, Apple M1) with support for .
Yes. You can run the ObjectBox database on any IoT device that runs Linux. We also offer Go and C APIs. Check our and see how easy it is to sync data across platforms in real time with ObjectBox.
If you only do a rename on the language level, ObjectBox will by default remove the old and add a new entity/property. .
The Google Play download size increases by around 2.3 MB (checked for ObjectBox 3.0.0) as a native library for each is packaged. If you split by ABI or use it only increases around 0.6 MB.
When building with minimum API level 23 (Android 6.0), the raw file (APK or AAB) size increases more, by around 6.1 MB. This is because the Android Plugin adds extractNativeLibs="false" to your AndroidManifest.xml . This turns off compression. However, this allows Google Play to optimally compress APKs before downloading them to each device (see download size above) and reduces the size of your app updates (on Android 6.0 or newer). . It also avoids issues that might occur when extracting the libraries.
This is also in any case when building a Flutter app with minimum API level 23 (Android 6.0).
For Java, there is an experimental initialDbFile() method when building BoxStore. if this is useful!
Questions that apply to all supported platforms and languages are answered in the .
For Java/Kotlin:
For Flutter/Dart:
If you have a usage question regarding ObjectBox, please post on Stack Overflow.