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I'm building a Flask web application. I use an API to retrieve data once per day. The data is returned as JSON. The JSON is stored in a file, and is sent to the client each time they access the site. The application uses an SQLite database to keep track of user information and user-associated data.

How should I go about storing the data received from the API? Would it be preferable to store it in the database since it is just updated once per day, or should I keep the response in a JSON format as I do currently?

Viraj Shah
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Phrille
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1 Answers1

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The real question you are asking is how should I store data. It doesn't matter, nor does anybody care, where the data originates from: a message queue, an HTTP request, from the code itself. Here are the parameters for your problem:

  1. You have data.
  2. You want to know the best way to store the data.
  3. You are currently using a SQLite database for user information and associated data
  4. For this new data, you are currently storing it in a JSON file

Next you have to ask yourself the following questions:

  1. How much data are you storing?
  2. Is the data structured?
  3. Will I be querying the data by a specific field?
  4. Does the user need every part of the JSON file?
  5. How often will the data be requested?

I made a little flowchart to help you out:

Flowchart of whether or not to use a database or a file

Viraj Shah
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