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NavigationHistoryEntry: key property

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The key read-only property of the NavigationHistoryEntry interface returns the key of the history entry. This is a unique, UA-generated value that represents the history entry's slot in the entries list. It is used to navigate that particular slot via Navigation.traverseTo(). The key will be reused by other entries that replace the entry in the list (that is, if the NavigateEvent.navigationType is replace).

This differs from the id of a history entry. The id is a unique, UA-generated value that always represents a specific history entry rather than its slot in the entries list. This is useful to correlate it with an external resource such as a storage cache.

Value

A string representing the key of the NavigationHistoryEntry.

Examples

Basic usage

const current = navigation.currentEntry;
console.log(current.key);

Set up a home button

function initHomeBtn() {
  // Get the key of the first loaded entry
  // so the user can always go back to this view.
  const { key } = navigation.currentEntry;
  backToHomeButton.onclick = () => {
    navigation.traverseTo(key);
  };
}
// Intercept navigate events, such as link clicks, and
// replace them with single-page navigations
navigation.addEventListener("navigate", (event) => {
  event.intercept({
    async handler() {
      // Navigate to a different view,
      // but the "home" button will always work.
    },
  });
});

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard # dom-navigationhistoryentry-key-dev

Browser compatibility