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NDEFRecord: toRecords() method

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

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

The toRecords() method of the NDEFRecord interface converts NDEFRecord.data to a sequence of records based on NDEFRecord.recordType, and returns the result. This allows parsing the payloads of record types which may contain nested records, such as smart poster and external type records.

Syntax

js

toRecords()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A list of NDEFRecords.

Exceptions

NotSupported DOMException

Indicates that the User Agent does not know how to parse this combination of NDEFRecord.data and NDEFRecord.recordType.

Examples

Read an external record with an NDEF message as payload

The example uses external type records to create application-defined records. These records may contain an NDEFMessage as payload, with its own NDEFRecord objects, including local types that are used in the context of the application. Notice that the smart poster record type also contains an NDEF message as payload.

Because NDEF gives no guarantee on the ordering of records, using an external type record with an NDEF message as payload can be useful for encapsulating related data.

This example shows how to read an external record for social posts, which contains an NDEFMessage, containing a text record and a record with the local type "act" (action), with a definition borrowed from smart poster, but used in local application context.

js

const ndefReader = new NDEFReader();
await ndefReader.scan();
ndefReader.onreading = (event) => {
  const externalRecord = event.message.records.find(
    (record) => record.type === "example.com:smart-poster",
  );

  let action, text;

  for (const record of externalRecord.toRecords()) {
    if (record.recordType === "text") {
      const decoder = new TextDecoder(record.encoding);
      text = decoder.decode(record.data);
    } else if (record.recordType === ":act") {
      action = record.data.getUint8(0);
    }
  }

  switch (action) {
    case 0: // do the action
      console.log(`Post "${text}" to timeline`);
      break;
    case 1: // save for later
      console.log(`Save "${text}" as a draft`);
      break;
    case 2: // open for editing
      console.log(`Show editable post with "${text}"`);
      break;
  }
};

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
toRecords No No No No No No 89 89 No 63 No 15.0

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/NDEFRecord/toRecords