HTML5: Transferring localStorage data between machines & browsers

An app I've been building recently makes extensive use of the HTML5 localStorage API, which is beautifully simple and just works. This system stores a limited (normally maximum 5MB) of data as name / value string pairs on a per-domain basis in the user's browser. Check out my other post on localStorage for more details

I came across an issue today where a colleague had saved some data locally that I needed to use, and it seemed there wasn't an easy way to transfer the data across. Luckily a few minutes of fiddling showed it was in fact super-easy.

Just write out the total contents of the localStorage file as a JSON string, email or otherwise transfer it to the other computer, and then read it back into localStorage.

Here's the code. I ran this by opening the JavaScript console in my browser and just typed the commands

// Write out the whole contents of the localStorage..
JSON.stringify(localStorage);
// Copy the output..

// Now on the other computer, read it in again..

var storage = !! PASTE THE DATA HERE !!;
for (var name in storage) { localStorage.setItem(name, storage[name] ); }