Window.sessionStorage

The read-only sessionStorage property accesses a session Storage object for the current origin. sessionStorage is similar to localStorage; the difference is that while data in localStorage doesn't expire, data in sessionStorage is cleared when the page session ends.

  • Whenever a document is loaded in a particular tab in the browser, a unique page session gets created and assigned to that particular tab. That page session is valid only for that particular tab.
  • A page session lasts as long as the tab or the browser is open, and survives over page reloads and restores.
  • Opening a page in a new tab or window creates a new session with the value of the top-level browsing context, which differs from how session cookies work.
  • Opening multiple tabs/windows with the same URL creates sessionStorage for each tab/window.
  • Duplicating a tab copies the tab's sessionStorage into the new tab.
  • Closing a tab/window ends the session and clears objects in sessionStorage.

Data stored in sessionStorage is specific to the protocol of the page. In particular, data stored by a script on a site accessed with HTTP (e.g., http://example.com) is put in a different sessionStorage object from the same site accessed with HTTPS (e.g., https://example.com).

The keys and the values are always in the UTF-16 DOMString format, which uses two bytes per character. As with objects, integer keys are automatically converted to strings.

Value

A Storage object which can be used to access the current origin's session storage space.

Exceptions

SecurityError

The request violates a policy decision, or the origin is not a valid scheme/host/port tuple (this can happen if the origin uses the file: or data: scheme, for example). For example, the user may have their browser configured to deny permission to persist data for the specified origin.

Examples

Basic usage

// Save data to sessionStorage
sessionStorage.setItem('key', 'value');

// Get saved data from sessionStorage
let data = sessionStorage.getItem('key');

// Remove saved data from sessionStorage
sessionStorage.removeItem('key');

// Remove all saved data from sessionStorage
sessionStorage.clear();

Saving text between refreshes

The following example autosaves the contents of a text field, and if the browser is refreshed, restores the text field content so that no writing is lost. 

// Get the text field that we're going to track
let field = document.getElementById("field");

// See if we have an autosave value
// (this will only happen if the page is accidentally refreshed)
if (sessionStorage.getItem("autosave")) {
  // Restore the contents of the text field
  field.value = sessionStorage.getItem("autosave");
}

// Listen for changes in the text field
field.addEventListener("change", function() {
  // And save the results into the session storage object
  sessionStorage.setItem("autosave", field.value);
});

Note: Please refer to the Using the Web Storage API article for a full example.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-sessionstorage-dev

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also