W3cubDocs

/Web APIs

Headers

The Headers interface of the Fetch API allows you to perform various actions on HTTP request and response headers. These actions include retrieving, setting, adding to, and removing headers from the list of the request's headers.

A Headers object has an associated header list, which is initially empty and consists of zero or more name and value pairs. You can add to this using methods like append() (see Examples.) In all methods of this interface, header names are matched by case-insensitive byte sequence.

For security reasons, some headers can only be controlled by the user agent. These headers include the forbidden header names and forbidden response header names.

A Headers object also has an associated guard, which takes a value of immutable, request, request-no-cors, response, or none. This affects whether the set(), delete(), and append() methods will mutate the header. For more information see Guard.

You can retrieve a Headers object via the Request.headers and Response.headers properties, and create a new Headers object using the Headers() constructor.

An object implementing Headers can directly be used in a for...of structure, instead of entries(): for (const p of myHeaders) is equivalent to for (const p of myHeaders.entries()).

Note: you can find out more about the available headers by reading our HTTP headers reference.

Constructor

Headers()

Creates a new Headers object.

Instance methods

Headers.append()

Appends a new value onto an existing header inside a Headers object, or adds the header if it does not already exist.

Headers.delete()

Deletes a header from a Headers object.

Headers.entries()

Returns an iterator allowing to go through all key/value pairs contained in this object.

Headers.forEach()

Executes a provided function once for each key/value pair in this Headers object.

Headers.get()

Returns a String sequence of all the values of a header within a Headers object with a given name.

Headers.getSetCookie()

Returns an array containing the values of all Set-Cookie headers associated with a response.

Headers.has()

Returns a boolean stating whether a Headers object contains a certain header.

Headers.keys()

Returns an iterator allowing you to go through all keys of the key/value pairs contained in this object.

Headers.set()

Sets a new value for an existing header inside a Headers object, or adds the header if it does not already exist.

Headers.values()

Returns an iterator allowing you to go through all values of the key/value pairs contained in this object.

Note: To be clear, the difference between Headers.set() and Headers.append() is that if the specified header does already exist and does accept multiple values, Headers.set() will overwrite the existing value with the new one, whereas Headers.append() will append the new value onto the end of the set of values. See their dedicated pages for example code.

Note: All of the Headers methods will throw a TypeError if you try to pass in a reference to a name that isn't a valid HTTP Header name. The mutation operations will throw a TypeError if the header has an immutable Guard. In any other failure case they fail silently.

Note: When Header values are iterated over, they are automatically sorted in lexicographical order, and values from duplicate header names are combined.

Examples

In the following snippet, we create a new header using the Headers() constructor, add a new header to it using append(), then return that header value using get():

js

const myHeaders = new Headers();

myHeaders.append("Content-Type", "text/xml");
myHeaders.get("Content-Type"); // should return 'text/xml'

The same can be achieved by passing an array of arrays or an object literal to the constructor:

js

let myHeaders = new Headers({
  "Content-Type": "text/xml",
});

// or, using an array of arrays:
myHeaders = new Headers([["Content-Type", "text/xml"]]);

myHeaders.get("Content-Type"); // should return 'text/xml'

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
@@iterator 42 16 44 No 29 10.1 42 42 44 29 10.3 4.0
Headers 42 14 39 No 29 10.1 42 42 39 29 10.3 4.0
Headers 42 14 39 No 29 10.1 42 42 39 29 10.3 4.0
append 42 14 39 No 29 10.1 42 42 39 29 10.3 4.0
delete 42 14 39 No 29 10.1 42 42 39 29 10.3 4.0
entries 42 16 44 No 29 10.1 42 42 44 29 10.3 4.0
forEach 42 14 47 No 29 10.1 42 42 47 29 10.3 4.0
get
42Before version 57, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
14
39Before version 52, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
No
29Before version 44, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
10.1
42Before version 57, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
42Before version 57, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
39Before version 52, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
29Before version 43, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
10.3
4.0Before version 7.0, get() returns only the first value for the specified header.
getSetCookie 113 113 112 No 99 17 113 113 112 No 17 No
has 42 14 39 No 29 10.1 42 42 39 29 10.3 4.0
keys 42 16 44 No 29 10.1 42 42 44 29 10.3 4.0
lexicographical_sorting 57 79 44 No 44 No 57 57 44 43 No 7.0
set 42 14 39 No 29 10.1 42 42 39 29 10.3 4.0
values 42 16 44 No 29 10.1 42 42 44 29 10.3 4.0

See also

© 2005–2023 MDN contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Headers