Key Expiration (TTL for keys)

Since version 1.36.2, Deno KV supports key expiration, allowing developers to control time to live (TTL) for keys in a KV database. This allows an expiration timestamp to be associated with a key, after which the key will be automatically deleted from the database:

const kv = await Deno.openKv();

// `expireIn` is the number of milliseconds after which the key will expire.
function addSession(session: Session, expireIn: number) {
  await kv.set(["sessions", session.id], session, { expireIn });
}

Key expiration is supported on both Deno CLI and Deno Deploy.

Atomic expiration of multiple keys Jump to heading#

If multiple keys are set in the same atomic operation and have the same expireIn value, the expiration of those keys will be atomic. For example:

const kv = await Deno.openKv();

function addUnverifiedUser(
  user: User,
  verificationToken: string,
  expireIn: number,
) {
  await kv.atomic()
    .set(["users", user.id], user, { expireIn })
    .set(["verificationTokens", verificationToken], user.id, { expireIn })
    .commit();
}

Caveats Jump to heading#

The expire timestamp specifies the earliest time after which the key can be deleted from the database. An implementation is allowed to expire a key at any time after the specified timestamp, but not before. If you need to strictly enforce an expiration time (e.g. for security purposes), please also add it as a field of your value and do a check after retrieving the value from the database.