Does HTML5 localStorage have an expiry date? [duplicate]

Question

For how long is data stored in localStorage (as part of DOM Storage in HTML5) available? Can I set an expiration time for the data which I put into local storage?

Answer 1

I would suggest to store timestamp in the object you store in the localStorage

var object = {value: "value", timestamp: new Date().getTime()}
localStorage.setItem("key", JSON.stringify(object));

You can parse the object, get the timestamp and compare with the current Date, and if necessary, update the value of the object.

var object = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem("key")),
    dateString = object.timestamp,
    now = new Date().getTime().toString();

compareTime(dateString, now); //to implement

---

Alternatively, you could use a light-weight wrapper like localstorage-slim.js which handles this for you.

Answer 2

It's not possible to specify expiration. It's completely up to the user.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/localStorage

Of course, it's possible that something your application stores on the client may not be there later. The user can explicitly get rid of local storage, or the browser may run into space considerations. It's good to program defensively. Generally however things remain "forever" based on some practical definition of that word.

edit — obviously, your own application can actively remove stuff if it decides it's too old. That is, you can explicitly include some sort of timestamp in what you've got saved, and then use that later to decide whether or not information should be flushed.

Answer 3

You can use lscache. It handles this for you automatically, including instances where the storage size exceeds the limit. If that happens, it begins pruning items that are the closest to their specified expiration.

From the readme:

lscache.set

Stores the value in localStorage. Expires after specified number of minutes.

Arguments
key (string)
value (Object|string)
time (number: optional)

This is the only real difference between the regular storage methods. Get, remove, etc work the same.

If you don't need that much functionality, you can simply store a time stamp with the value (via JSON) and check it for expiry.

Noteworthy, there's a good reason why local storage is left up to the user. But, things like lscache do come in handy when you need to store extremely temporary data.