IDBCursor: direction property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The direction read-only property of the IDBCursor interface is a string that returns the direction of traversal of the cursor (set using IDBObjectStore.openCursor for example). See the Value section below for possible values.

Value

A string indicating the direction in which the cursor is traversing the data. Possible values are:

next

The cursor is opened at the start of the source.

nextunique

The cursor is opened at the start of the source. For every key with duplicate values, only the record closest to the start is yielded.

prev

The cursor is opened at the end of the source.

prevunique

The cursor is opened at the end of the source. For every key with duplicate values, only the record closest to the start is yielded.

Examples

In this simple fragment we create a transaction, retrieve an object store, then use a cursor to iterate through all the records in the object store. Within each iteration we log the direction of the cursor.

Note: We can't change the direction of travel of the cursor using the direction property, as it is read-only. We specify the direction of travel using the 2nd argument of IDBObjectStore.openCursor.

The cursor does not require us to select the data based on a key; we can just grab all of it. Also note that in each iteration of the loop, you can grab data from the current record under the cursor object using cursor.value.foo. For a complete working example, see our IDBCursor example (View the example live).

js
function backwards() {
  list.textContent = "";
  const transaction = db.transaction(["rushAlbumList"], "readonly");
  const objectStore = transaction.objectStore("rushAlbumList");

  objectStore.openCursor(null, "prev").onsuccess = (event) => {
    const cursor = event.target.result;
    if (cursor) {
      const listItem = document.createElement("li");
      listItem.textContent = `${cursor.value.albumTitle}, ${cursor.value.year}`;
      list.appendChild(listItem);

      console.log(cursor.direction);
      cursor.continue();
    } else {
      console.log("Entries displayed backwards.");
    }
  };
}

Specifications

Specification
Indexed Database API 3.0
# ref-for-dom-idbcursor-direction①

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
direction
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 23 (Release date: 2012-11-06)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 10 (Release date: 2012-01-31)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 15 (Release date: 2013-07-02)
footnote Full support
Safari – Full support
Safari 8 (Release date: 2014-10-16)
footnote Full support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 25 (Release date: 2013-02-27)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 22 (Release date: 2013-06-25)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 14 (Release date: 2013-05-21)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – Full support
Safari on iOS 8 (Release date: 2014-09-17)
footnote Full support
Samsung Internet – Full support
Samsung Internet 1.5 (Release date: 2013-09-25)
footnote Full support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 4.4 (Release date: 2013-12-09)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – Full support
WebView on iOS 8 (Release date: 2014-09-17)
footnote Full support

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support

See also