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web api interface

ClipboardItem

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Secure context

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

The ClipboardItem interface enables developers to use a single type to represent a range of different data formats.

[!NOTE] The read() and write() methods can be used to work with text strings and arbitrary data items represented by Blob instances. However, if you are solely working with text, it is more convenient to use the readText() and writeText() methods.

Constructor

Instance 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

  • 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 before attempting to write data.

Instance methods

Examples

Writing text to the clipboard

In this example we first define two constants containing references to a <p> element containing some text and a <button> element.

Next, we define a function called copyToClipboard(). This starts off by storing a "text/plain" MIME type in a constant, then creating an object called clipboardItemData that contains one property with a key equal to the MIME type and a value of the text we want to copy to the clipboard (the content of the <p> element, in this case). Because we are working with text, we can pass it in directly rather than having to create a Blob.

We construct a new ClipboardItem object using the ClipboardItem() constructor, and pass it into the write() method to copy the text to the clipboard.

Finally, we add an event listener to the <button> so that it runs the function when pressed.

const textSource = document.querySelector("p");
const copyBtn = document.querySelector("button");

async function copyToClipboard() {
  const type = "text/plain";
  const clipboardItemData = {
    [type]: textSource.textContent,
  };
  const clipboardItem = new ClipboardItem(clipboardItemData);
  await navigator.clipboard.write([clipboardItem]);
}

copyBtn.addEventListener("click", copyToClipboard);

Writing an image to the clipboard

Here we use supports() to check whether the image/svg+xml MIME data type is supported. If it is, we fetch an SVG 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.

async function writeClipImg() {
  try {
    if (ClipboardItem.supports("image/svg+xml")) {
      const imgURL = "/my-image.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 read() method. Then utilizing the types property to set the getType() argument and return the corresponding blob object.

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

SpecificationsStandards references are available on the canonical MDN page.

Browser compatibility

Browser compatibilityCompatibility data is available on the canonical MDN page.

See also