{"id":4123,"date":"2017-03-02T02:03:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T07:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/local.brightwhiz\/?p=4123"},"modified":"2021-12-08T12:25:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T17:25:27","slug":"javascript-unix-timestamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/local.brightwhiz\/javascript-unix-timestamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Here are Three Subtle Ways to get a Unix Timestamp in JavaScript"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Did you know you can &#8220;<em>easily<\/em>&#8221; get a Unix-like timestamp using <a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/tag\/javascript\/\">JavaScript<\/a> in more than just one way? Everyone has their own reasons as to why they would want to do this, but hey! We are not Judging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those who are lost at this point, a <a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/tag\/unix\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Unix<\/a> timestamp which is also known as POSIX time or epoch time is a system for describing instants in time, or so says <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unix_time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a>. It is the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This system is widely used on Unix-like operating systems that is why is commonly called a Unix timestamp. It is also important to note that this system does not factor in leap seconds and therefore is not a true representation of UTC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To print the time stamp on Unix-like operating systems you can simply type this date +%s in the command line. Now let us see how we can do this in JavaScript as we restrict this to Three examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How to get the Unix Timestamp in JavaScript<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Method 1:<\/strong> If you call:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">new Date();<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>You get a formatted date representation that looks similar to this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wed Mar 01, 2017, 19:56:30 GMT+0300 (E. Africa Standard Time)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That, unfortunately, is not a timestamp. We can take advantage of a side effect of the JavaScript <a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/tag\/programming-languages\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">language<\/a> and force that call to give us the timestamp by prefixing the <strong>+ unary operator<\/strong> which triggers the <em><code>valueof<\/code><\/em> method in that Date object. Using this method may not be considered good coding practice but it works nevertheless. With that said, therefore to get the timestamp you can call:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">new Date();<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>or alternatively or more correctly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">new Date().valueOf();<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><code>new Date().valueOf()<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To get seconds from milliseconds you can do the following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">Math.floor(new Date().valueOf() \/ 1000);<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Method 2:<\/strong> You can get the timestamp using the <code>now()<\/code> method of the <em>Date<\/em> object as shown below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">Date.now();<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Older browsers (read IE8 and older) will not be able to use this method without a shim such as the one shown here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">if (!Date.now) {\n Date.now = function() { return new Date().getTime(); }\n }<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, this displays the UTC timestamp in milliseconds. should you want to display the above in seconds you can process it further as seen here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">Math.floor(Date.now() \/ 1000);<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Method 3:<\/strong> As a side effect of the above method, you will notice there is a third way of doing this without creating another date object. it is simply to call the <em>getTime<\/em> method as shown here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">new Date().getTime();<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>To retrieve the seconds from the above you can do this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-javascript\">Math.round(new Date().getTime()\/1000);<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>There you have it. That is the basics of getting the Unix-like UTC timestamp in JavaScript, what you do with it, the possibilities are limitless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know you can &#8220;easily&#8221; get a Unix-like timestamp using JavaScript in more than just one way? Everyone has their own reasons as to why they would want to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27,28,16,17],"tags":[106,184,212,320,328,471,472,523,604,635,636,638],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How can I to get a Unix Timestamp in JavaScript to use on my Website?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We all Know about the Unix Timestamp and what it means and how useful it is, so here we show you how to get the same using JavaScript\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/local.brightwhiz\/javascript-unix-timestamp\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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