When do items in HTML5 local storage expire?

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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?

18 Answers

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.

The lifecycle is controlled by the application/user.

From the standard:

User agents should expire data from the local storage areas only for security reasons or when requested to do so by the user. User agents should always avoid deleting data while a script that could access that data is running.

If you’re familiar with the browsers locaStorage object, you know that there’s no provision for providing an expiry time. However, we can use Javascript to add a TTL (Time to live) to invalidate items in locaStorage after a certain period of time elapses.

function setLocalStorageItem(key, value, ttl) {
    // `item` is an object which contains the original value
    // as well as the time when it's supposed to expire
    let item = {
        value: value,
        expiry: ttl ? Date.now() + ttl : null
    };

    localStorage.setItem(key, JSON.stringify(item));
}

function getLocalStorageItem(key) {
    let item = localStorage.getItem(key);
    
    // if the item doesn't exist, return null
    if (!item) return null;

    item = JSON.parse(item);
    // compare the expiry time of the item with the current time
    if (item.expiry && Date.now() > item.expiry) {
        // If the item is expired, delete the item from storage and return null
        localStorage.removeItem(key);

        return null;
    }
    
    return item.value;
}

You can try this one.

var hours = 24; // Reset when storage is more than 24hours
var now = Date.now();
var setupTime = localStorage.getItem('setupTime');
if (setupTime == null) {
     localStorage.setItem('setupTime', now)
} else if (now - setupTime > hours*60*60*1000) {
    localStorage.clear()
    localStorage.setItem('setupTime', now);
}

Javascript localStorage do not have any options to set expire time

Then i use these functions to check supports, Set and Get

function ls_support(){
    return "localStorage" in window&&window["localStorage"]!==null;
}

function lsset(key,val,exp){
    if(ls_support()){
        if(!exp) exp=600;// = 10 minutes Default
        localStorage[key]=
            JSON.stringify({
                "val":val,
                "exp":~~((new Date()).getTime()/1000)+exp
            });
    }
}

function lsget(key){
    if(ls_support()){
        str=localStorage[key];
        if("undefined"!=typeof(str)&&str.length){
            try{// is json or not
                json=JSON.parse(str);
            }catch(e){// if variable not set via lsset func
                //json.exp=false;// will return null
                return str;// will return original variable
            }
            if(json.exp){// variable setted via lsset func
                if(~~((new Date()).getTime()/1000)>json.exp){// expired
                    delete localStorage[key];
                }else{
                    return json.val;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return null;
}

And it seems works fine :

get and set localstorage in pure javascript

function setStorage(name,value){
    return localStorage.setItem(name,JSON.stringify({value:value,timestamp:Math.round((new Date()).getTime()/1000)}));
}
function getStorage(name,timeout){
    var object = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem(name));
    if(object){
        if(Math.round((new Date()).getTime()/1000) < (object.timestamp+timeout)){
            return object.value;
        }else{
            localStorage.removeItem(name);
        }
    }
    return false;
}
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