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Hacking PouchDB to Use It on React Native

Takuya Matsuyama on April 04, 2019

UPDATE(2021/02/12) Created PouchDB@7 for React Native Takuya Matsuyama ・ Feb 12 '21 ...

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Looks good. I wonder if it's possible to polyfill the buffer logic rather than forking pouchdb to sort the attachment issue. Otherwise, might be worth putting together a PR for a new option to the PouchDB repo for forcing base64 when buffers are not supported/available.

Takuya Matsuyama • Apr 4 '19

I've tried rn-nodeify to polyfill Buffer but it didn't solve the issue.

Nathan Glenn • Apr 6 '19

Thanks so much for putting this together! I tried out the demo and it worked great. I was surprised to see that you have a simple "hello, world!" text encoded as base64. Why did you do that? Do all attachments have to be base64-encoded with your method?

Takuya Matsuyama • Apr 7 '19

That's because I wanted to demonstrate storing attachments works fine on RN apps. "Hello, world" text is useful for that.
Right. All attachments must be encoded in base64 to let PouchDB avoid calling readAsBinaryString.

Julio Márquez • Apr 30 '19 • Edited

Hi takuya,

I apply your changes but still I cannot see the base64 image. I can see the _attachment field but with a weird format (maybe blob)

I also set the encoding to plain/text
In couchdb server I can see the image

But when the synchronization tries to download the image back to the device its in a wrong format.

I can see the attachment has this form: 77+977+977+....9AAAA....

Could you please advise how did you solve this?

Thanks a lot in advance

Duy Tran • Jun 10 '19 • Edited

I have the same problem, image attachment has a weird format with 77+9UE5HDQoaCgAAAAAAAAAA...
I think it still a blob type since the structure of this object is like this:

Rom • Aug 21 '19

Thanks, wanted to mention the same. You're right, except there are some issues with attachments (see github.com/stockulus/pouchdb-react...), but they are working on it.

Alexander • Oct 19 '19

Sorry to say, but it doesn't and they dont, unfortunately. Project seems to be abandoned, look at open issues.
Sure you can still use it if you don't need replication (what?), but asyncstorage would be easier.

Rom • Oct 28 '19

Replication does work, but not attachment.

vittal • Aug 11 '20

I am getting this error
TypeError: WebSqlPouchCore.call is not a function

productivix • Oct 29 '22

hi, how did you solve this issue please ?

Mohaimin Islam • May 30 '20

Where are these SQLite DBs located on the phone? Does it exist in the app installation directory and will get removed upon app un-installation? If so, is there any DB that I can store outside the scope of the app installation so that it doesn't get removed after un-installation?

Asking because building a very offline first accessible app where the user might not be aware enough to know that uninstalling the app might lose all offline data.