localStorage is not defined (Angular Universal)

These steps resolved my issue:

Step 1: Run this command:

npm i localstorage-polyfill --save

Step 2: Add these two lines in server.ts file:

import 'localstorage-polyfill'

global['localStorage'] = localStorage;

Once you are done, run build command (eg: npm run build:serverless)

All set now. Start the server again and you can see the issue is resolved.

Note: Use localStorage not window.localStorage, eg: localStorage.setItem(keyname, value)

As wierd as this approach might seem, it is working, and I had to do none of the plumbing the other answers are suggesting.

Step 1

Install localstorage-polyfill: https://github.com/capaj/localstorage-polyfill

Step 2

Assuming you followed this step: https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/wiki/stories-universal-rendering, you should have a file called, server.js in your project root folder.

In this server.js add this:

import 'localstorage-polyfill'

global['localStorage'] = localStorage;

Step 3

Rebuild your project, npm run build:ssr, and all should work fine now.

---

Does the above approach work? Yes, as far as I can tell.

Is it the best? Maybe not

Any performance issues? Not that I know of. Enlighten me.

However, as it stands now, this is the dumbest, most cleanest approach to getting my localStorage to pass

Update for newer versions of Angular

OpaqueToken was superseded by InjectionToken which works much in the same way -- except it has a generic interface InjectionToken<T> which makes for better type checking and inference.

Orginal Answer

Two things:

1. You are not injecting any object that contains the localStorage object, you are trying to access it directly as a global. Any global access should be the first clue that something is wrong.
2. There is no window.localStorage in nodejs.

What you need to do is inject an adapter for localStorage that will work for both the browser and NodeJS. This will also give you testable code.

in local-storage.ts:

import { OpaqueToken } from '@angular/core';

export const LocalStorage = new OpaqueToken('localStorage');

In your main.browser.ts we will inject the actual localStorage object from your browser:

import {LocalStorage} from './local-storage.ts';

export function ngApp() {
  return bootstrap(App, [
    // ...

    UserService,
    { provide: LocalStorage, useValue: window.localStorage}
  ]);

And then in main.node.ts we will use an empty object:

... 
providers: [
    // ...
    UserService,
    {provide: LocalStorage, useValue: {getItem() {} }}
]
...

Then your service injects this:

import { LocalStorage } from '../local-storage';

export class UserService {

    constructor(@Inject(LocalStorage) private localStorage: LocalStorage) {}

    loadCurrentUser() {

        const token = this.localStorage.getItem('token');
        ...
    };
}

In Angular 4 (and 5) you can easily deal with such issue with a simple function in the following way:

app.module.ts

@NgModule({
    providers: [
        { provide: 'LOCALSTORAGE', useFactory: getLocalStorage }
    ]
})
export class AppModule {
}

export function getLocalStorage() {
    return (typeof window !== "undefined") ? window.localStorage : null;
}

If you have a server/client split file AppModule, place it in the app.module.shared.ts file - the function won't break your code - unless you need to enforce completely different behaviours for the server and client builds; if that’s the case, it could be wiser to implement a custom class factory instead, just like it has been shown in other answers.

Anyway, once you're done with the provider implementation, you can inject the LOCALSTORAGE generic in any Angular component and check for the platform type with the Angular-native isPlatformBrowser function before using it:

import { PLATFORM_ID } from '@angular/core';
import { isPlatformBrowser, isPlatformServer } from '@angular/common';

@Injectable()
export class SomeComponent {
    constructor(
        @Inject(PLATFORM_ID) private platformId: any,
        @Inject('LOCALSTORAGE') private localStorage: any) {

        // do something

    }

    NgOnInit() {
        if (isPlatformBrowser(this.platformId)) {
            // localStorage will be available: we can use it.
        }
        if (isPlatformServer(this.platformId)) {
            // localStorage will be null.
        }
    }
}

It’s worth noting that, since the getLocalStorage() function will return null if the window object isn’t available, you could just check for this.localStorage nullability and entirely skip the platform type check. However, I strongly recommend the above approach as that function implementation (and return value) might be subject to change in the future; conversely, the isPlatformBrowser / isPlatformServer return values are something that can be trusted by design.

For more info, check out this blog post that I wrote on the topic.