Storage: getItem() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The getItem() method of the Storage interface, when passed a key name, will return that key's value, or null if the key does not exist, in the given Storage object.

Syntax

js
getItem(keyName)

Parameters

keyName

A string containing the name of the key you want to retrieve the value of.

Return value

A string containing the value of the key. If the key does not exist, null is returned.

Examples

The following function retrieves three data items from local storage, then uses them to set custom styles on a page.

js
function setStyles() {
  const currentColor = localStorage.getItem("bgcolor");
  const currentFont = localStorage.getItem("font");
  const currentImage = localStorage.getItem("image");

  document.getElementById("bgcolor").value = currentColor;
  document.getElementById("font").value = currentFont;
  document.getElementById("image").value = currentImage;

  htmlElem.style.backgroundColor = `#${currentColor}`;
  pElem.style.fontFamily = currentFont;
  imgElem.setAttribute("src", currentImage);
}

Note: To see this used within a real-world example, see our Web Storage Demo.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-storage-getitem-dev

Browser compatibility

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See also