Where in the IE8 file system stores the values ​​stored in localStorage?

Question

My organization is starting to use this feature, and it would be ideal for testing it if we could find and delete these values, as well as see what is written to disk, but I cannot figure out where IE8 stores them. I found .sqlite files in

AppData \ Local \ Apple Computer \ Safari for Safari as well as AppData \ Roaming \ Mozilla \ Firefox \ Profiles \ ryb7f27l.default \ webappsstore.sqlite for FF3.5

Any help on IE8 would be appreciated!

Answer 1

The location of the local storage on the file system is most likely part of an implementation that will not always be the same from version to version (it may even change with the service pack or upgrade to IE).

To clear local storage using approved methods, see Cleaning Storage Areas on Introduction to the MSDN DOM Storage page :

Cleaning Storage Areas

Session state is freed as soon as the last window closes the link to this data. However, users can clear storage areas at any time by selecting Delete browsing history from the Tools menu in Internet Explorer, selecting the Cookies check box, and then click OK . This clears the session and local storage areas for all domains that are not in the Favorites folder and resets registry quotas. Clear the Save favorite site data check box to delete all storage areas, regardless of source.

To remove key / value pairs from the storage list, iterate over collections with removeItem or use clear to remove all items at once. Keep in mind that changes to the local storage area are saved to disk asynchronously.

An alternative to using approved methods is to use the Process Monitor tool to view disk and registry access when you write something to window.localStorage . Unfortunately, if you see that it is being written to a file like %userprofile%\Cookies\index.dat , it would probably be unwise to delete this file (since it contains information about all other cookies that IE knows about).

EDIT: Using my own suggestion, I found that local storage seems to be at %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStore (on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 it will be slightly different). These are just XML files, but I'm not sure how safe they are for deletion due to index.dat (which may contain information about the existence of XML files or their contents).

Answer 2

There are also some registry settings that may be related to this:

 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\LowRegistry\DOMStorage 

Answer 3

Removing localhost [1] .xml from the appropriate directory in the% userprofile% \ Local Settings \ Application Data \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ DOMStore folder resolved the issue.