IDBIndex: getKey() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2021.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The getKey() method of the IDBIndex interface returns an IDBRequest object, and, in a separate thread, finds either the primary key that corresponds to the given key in this index or the first corresponding primary key, if key is set to an IDBKeyRange.

If a primary key is found, it is set as the result of the request object. Note that this doesn't return the whole record as IDBIndex.get does.

Syntax

js
getKey()
getKey(key)

Parameters

key Optional

A key or IDBKeyRange that identifies a record to be retrieved. If this value is null or missing, the browser will use an unbound key range.

Return value

An IDBRequest object on which subsequent events related to this operation are fired.

If the operation is successful, the value of the request's result property is the key for the first record matching the given key or key range.

Exceptions

This method may raise a DOMException of one of the following types:

TransactionInactiveError DOMException

Thrown if this IDBIndex's transaction is inactive.

DataError DOMException

Thrown if the key or key range provided contains an invalid key.

InvalidStateError DOMException

Thrown if the IDBIndex has been deleted or removed.

Examples

In the following example we open a transaction and an object store, then get the index lName from a simple contacts database. We then open a basic cursor on the index using IDBIndex.openCursor — this works the same as opening a cursor directly on an ObjectStore using IDBObjectStore.openCursor except that the returned records are sorted based on the index, not the primary key.

myIndex.getKey('Bungle') is then used to retrieve the primary key of the record with an lName of Bungle, and the result of that request is logged to the console when its success callback returns.

Finally, we iterate through each record, and insert the data into an HTML table. For a complete working example, see our IndexedDB-examples demo repo (View the example live).

js
function displayDataByIndex() {
  tableEntry.textContent = "";
  const transaction = db.transaction(["contactsList"], "readonly");
  const objectStore = transaction.objectStore("contactsList");

  const myIndex = objectStore.index("lName");
  const getKeyRequest = myIndex.getKey("Bungle");
  getKeyRequest.onsuccess = () => {
    console.log(getKeyRequest.result);
  };

  myIndex.openCursor().onsuccess = (event) => {
    const cursor = event.target.result;
    if (cursor) {
      const tableRow = document.createElement("tr");
      for (const cell of [
        cursor.value.id,
        cursor.value.lName,
        cursor.value.fName,
        cursor.value.jTitle,
        cursor.value.company,
        cursor.value.eMail,
        cursor.value.phone,
        cursor.value.age,
      ]) {
        const tableCell = document.createElement("td");
        tableCell.textContent = cell;
        tableRow.appendChild(tableCell);
      }
      tableEntry.appendChild(tableRow);

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

Specifications

Specification
Indexed Database API 3.0
# ref-for-dom-idbindex-getkey①

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also