ClipboardItem

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The ClipboardItem interface of the Clipboard API represents a single item format, used when reading or writing clipboard data using clipboard.read() and clipboard.write() respectively.

The benefit of having the ClipboardItem interface to represent data, is that it enables developers to cope with the varying scope of file types and data.

Note: To work with text see the Clipboard.readText() and Clipboard.writeText() methods of the Clipboard interface.

Constructor

ClipboardItem()

Creates a new ClipboardItem object, with the MIME type as the key and Blob as the value.

Instance properties

This interface provides the following properties.

types Read only

Returns an Array of MIME types available within the ClipboardItem.

presentationStyle Read only

Returns one of the following: "unspecified", "inline" or "attachment".

Static methods

This interface defines the following methods.

ClipboardItem.supports()

Checks whether a given MIME type is supported by the clipboard. This enables a website to detect whether a MIME type is supported by the clipboard before attempting to write data.

Instance methods

This interface defines the following methods.

getType()

Returns a Promise that resolves with a Blob of the requested MIME type, or an error if the MIME type is not found.

Examples

Writing to the clipboard

Here we use supports() to check whether the image/svg+xml MIME data type is supported. If it is, we fetch the image with the "Fetch API", and then read it into a Blob, which we can use to create a ClipboardItem that is written to the clipboard.

js
async function writeClipImg() {
  try {
    if (ClipboardItem.supports("image/svg+xml")) {
      const imgURL = "/myimage.svg";
      const data = await fetch(imgURL);
      const blob = await data.blob();
      await navigator.clipboard.write([
        new ClipboardItem({
          [blob.type]: blob,
        }),
      ]);
      console.log("Fetched image copied.");
    } else {
      console.log("SVG images are not supported by the clipboard.");
    }
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err.name, err.message);
  }
}

Reading from the clipboard

Here we're returning all items on the clipboard via the clipboard.read() method. Then utilizing the ClipboardItem.types property to set the getType() argument and return the corresponding blob object.

js
async function getClipboardContents() {
  try {
    const clipboardItems = await navigator.clipboard.read();

    for (const clipboardItem of clipboardItems) {
      for (const type of clipboardItem.types) {
        const blob = await clipboardItem.getType(type);
        // we can now use blob here
      }
    }
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err.name, err.message);
  }
}

Specifications

Specification
Clipboard API and events
# clipboarditem

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also