Idea 💡

localStorage is a very versatile part of web development for persisting data, but it can do so much more.

Every change fires a storage event on the window Object across tabs, which means it can be used as remote. 🤯

Potential uses 🛠

• Video controller in a small popup window
• Speaker view of presentation slides

Implementation ⚗

I used svelte-kit for the example (see links) 😉
The actual amount of code needed for this pattern is very minimalistic. On the remote side we only need to set a localStorage item and this in turn will trigger the event which we can listen to.

<button
  on:click={() => localStorage.setItem('signal', 'message')}>
  Set 'message'
</button>

The receiver is a little more work, but svelte is our friend and helper 💪

<script>
  let signal = '';
  const listener = () => {
    const value = localStorage.getItem('signal');
    if (!value) return;
    signal = value;
  };
</script>
<svelte:window on:storage={listener} />

Received Signal: {signal}

If you open the remote and the receiver (same browser and base URL) you should be able to send and receive signals across tabs without any network request.

⚠ because of security issues localStorage is blocked on the svelte REPL, so it will not work there

I hope you found this entry interesting and learned something new ☺

Links 🔗

• website
• repo
• Photo by Kelly Sikkema