Window: sessionStorage property

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 string format, which uses two bytes per character. As with objects, integer keys are automatically converted to strings.

// 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();

// 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", () => {
  // And save the results into the session storage object
  sessionStorage.setItem("autosave", field.value);
});