Read key-value pairs

To get the value for a given key, call the get() method on any KV namespace you have bound to your Worker code:

NAMESPACE.get(key);

The get() method returns a promise you can await on to get the value. If the key is not found, the promise will resolve with the literal value null.

The get() method may return stale values. If a given key has recently been read in a given location, changes to the key made in other locations may take up to 60 seconds to display.

An example of reading a key from within a Worker:

export default {
  async fetch(request, env, ctx) {
    const value = await env.NAMESPACE.get("first-key");

    if (value === null) {
      return new Response("Value not found", { status: 404 });
    }
    return new Response(value);
  },
};

You can read key-value pairs from the command line with Wrangler and from the API Open API docs link .

​​ Types

You can pass in an options object with a type parameter to the get() method:

NAMESPACE.get(key, { type: "text" });

The type parameter can be any of the following:

• text: A string (default).
• json: An object decoded from a JSON string.
• arrayBuffer: An ArrayBuffer Open external link instance.
• stream: A ReadableStream Open external link .

For simple values, use the default text type which provides you with your value as a string. For convenience, a json type is also specified which will convert a JSON value into an object before returning the object to you. For large values, use stream to request a ReadableStream. For binary values, use arrayBuffer to request an ArrayBuffer.

For large values, the choice of type can have a noticeable effect on latency and CPU usage. For reference, the type can be ordered from fastest to slowest as stream, arrayBuffer, text, and json.

​​ CacheTTL parameter

cacheTTL is a parameter that defines the length of time in seconds that a KV result is cached in the global network location it is accessed from.

Defining the length of time in seconds is useful for reducing cold read latency on keys that are read relatively infrequently. cacheTTL is useful if your data is write-once or write-rarely.

cacheTTL is not recommended if your data is updated often and you need to see updates shortly after they are written, because writes that happen from other global network locations will not be visible until the cached value expires.

The get() options object also accepts a cacheTTL parameter:

NAMESPACE.get(key, { cacheTTL: 3600 });

The cacheTTL parameter must be an integer greater than or equal to 60, which is the default.

The effective cacheTTL of an already cached item can be reduced by getting it again with a lower cacheTTL. For example, if you did NAMESPACE.get(key, {cacheTTL: 86400}) but later realized that caching for 24 hours was too long, you could NAMESPACE.get(key, {cacheTTL: 300}) or even NAMESPACE.get(key) and it would check for newer data to respect the provided cacheTTL, which defaults to 60 seconds.

​​ Metadata

A metadata is a serializable value you append to each KV entry.

Get the metadata associated with a key-value pair alongside its value by calling the getWithMetadata() method on a KV namespace you have bound in your Worker code:

const { value, metadata } = await NAMESPACE.getWithMetadata(key);

If there is no metadata associated with the requested key-value pair, null will be returned for metadata.

You can pass an options object with type and/or cacheTTL parameters to the getWithMetadata() method, similar to get().