Storing and retrieving objects in local storage using JavaScript

The HTML web storage API offers a way to store a large amount of data (5MB+) in a user's browser without affecting the website performance.

By default, both web storage objects — localStorage and sessionStorage — allows us to store only string key-value pairs:

const user = { name: 'Alex', job: 'Software Engineer' };

localStorage.setItem('user', user);

console.log(localStorage.getItem('user')); // [object Object]

If you want to store an entire JavaScript object, you first need to serialize it into a string by using the JSON.stringify() method:

const user = { name: 'Alex', job: 'Software Engineer' };

localStorage.setItem('user', JSON.stringify(user));

console.log(localStorage.getItem('user')); 
// {"name":"Alex","job":"Software Engineer"}

To retrieve the JavaScript object from localStorage, use the getItem() method. You still need to use the JSON.parse() method to parse the JSON string back to an object:

// Retrieve the JSON string
const userStr = localStorage.getItem('user');

// Parse JSON string to object
const userObj = JSON.parse(userStr);

// Print object attributes
console.log(userObj.name);  // Alex
console.log(userObj.job);    // Software Engineer

To learn more about localStorage and sessionStorage objects, take a look at this article.

✌️ Like this article? Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to RSS Feed.

You might also like...

Digital Ocean

The simplest cloud platform for developers & teams. Start with a $200 free credit.

Buy me a coffee ☕

If you enjoy reading my articles and want to help me out paying bills, please consider buying me a coffee ($5) or two ($10). I will be highly grateful to you ✌️

Enter the number of coffees below:

✨ Learn to build modern web applications using JavaScript and Spring Boot

I started this blog as a place to share everything I have learned in the last decade. I write about modern JavaScript, Node.js, Spring Boot, core Java, RESTful APIs, and all things web development.

The newsletter is sent every week and includes early access to clear, concise, and easy-to-follow tutorials, and other stuff I think you'd enjoy! No spam ever, unsubscribe at any time.