montanaflynn/human-date

Making dates and times readable for humans.

human-date

Making dates and times readable for humans.

Quick Start

Install:

npm install human-date --save

Usage:

var hdate = require('human-date')

hdate.prettyPrint("8/16/1987")
// August 16th, 1987

hdate.relativeTime(60 * 60 * 24 * 2 * -1)
// 2 days ago

hdate.relativeTime("8/16/2015")
// 125 days from now

hdate.monthName("8/16/2015")
// August

Methods

.prettyPrint(datestring or jsdate or numseconds, [options])

Arguments:

• datestring string that can be parsed as a date (Eg. "8/16/1987")
• jsdate object which is a javascript Date (Eg. new Date("8/16/1987"))
• numseconds integer seconds to or from the current time (Eg. -32)
• options: object with the following keys
  • showTime boolean: default: false

Returns:

• string representing the date. (Eg. "August 16th, 1987")

Examples:

hdate.prettyPrint('8-16-1987')
// August 16th, 1987

hdate.prettyPrint(new Date('8-16-1987'))
// August 16th, 1987

hdate.prettyPrint(-6400)
// November 17th, 2014 (at the time)

hdate.prettyPrint(new Date(1416448704578), { showTime: true })
// November 19th, 2014 at 5:58 pm

.relativeTime(datestring or jsdate or numseconds, [options])

Arguments:

• datestring string that can be parsed as a date (Eg. "8/16/1987")
• jsdate object which is a javascript Date (Eg. new Date("8/16/1987"))
• numseconds integer seconds to or from the current time (Eg. -32)
• options: object with the following keys
  • futureSuffix string default: "from now"
  • pastSuffix string default: "from now"
  • presentText string default: "now"
  • returnObject boolean: default: false
  • allUnits boolean: default: false

Returns:

Depending on the option returnObject you will get a string or an object:

• default string "27 years 96 days 21 hours 47 minutes 2 seconds ago"
• object { seconds: 31, hours: 4, days: 101, years: 27, past: true }

Examples:

hdate.relativeTime(4)
// 4 seconds from now

hdate.relativeTime(4, {futureSuffix: "in the future"})
// 4 seconds in the future

hdate.relativeTime("8-16-1987")
// 27 years ago

hdate.relativeTime(new Date("8-16-1987"))
// 27 years ago

hdate.relativeTime(new Date("8-16-1987"), {returnObject: true})
// { seconds: 31, minutes: 5, hours: 4, days: 101, years: 27, past: true }

hdate.relativeTime(75, {allUnits: true})
// 1 minute, 15 seconds from now

.monthName(datestring or jsdate or monthnum)

Arguments:

• datestring string that can be parsed as a date (Eg. "8/16/1987")
• jsdate object which is a javascript Date (Eg. new Date("8/16/1987"))
• monthnum integer the month number, not 0-indexed (Eg. 12)

Returns:

• string

Examples:

hdate.monthName(8)
// August

hdate.monthName("8-16-1987")
// August

hdate.monthName(new Date("8-16-1987"))
// August

.toUTC(datestring or jsdate or monthnum)

Arguments:

• datestring string that can be parsed as a date (Eg. "8/16/1987")
• jsdate object which is a javascript Date (Eg. new Date("8/16/1987"))
• epochtime integer time since epoch, in milliseconds (Eg. 1416451096261)

Returns:

• object native Date object modified to UTC timezone.

Examples:

hdate.toUTC(1000000000000)
// '2001-09-09T08:46:40.000Z'

hdate.toUTC(1000000000000).getFullYear()
// 2001

hdate.toUTC("8-16-1987")
// Sun Aug 16 1987 07:00:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)

hdate.toUTC(new Date("8-16-1987"))
// Sun Aug 16 1987 07:00:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)

hdate.toUTC(new Date("8-16-1987")).toISOString()
// 1987-08-16T14:00:00.000Z

Todos

• Add various options (prefixes, etc...)
• Support different locales.

Contributing

Forks and pull requests are most welcomed.

Please add any methods to test.js and run npm test before sending a pull request.

MIT license

Copyright (c) 2014-2016, Montana Flynn (http://anonfunction.com/)

human-date's Issues

Relative time acting weird

I am working on a chat application and whenever a new message is created I use the relativeTime

method to display the relative time since the time of the creation of the message. However, the recently created message acts a bit weird.
For new messages, if I subtract 1 from the seconds I get the desired behaviour but this is a bit hacky.
Am I missing something?

Why not use moment?

It already supports doing many things here, and would save some time?

Future date should use days

If the date is something in 5 days, I would expect to get a day of the week result, e.g. "friday, 10am" instead of "in 5 days".

Times that are "almost now" output incorrectly

See here: https://codesandbox.io/s/mo4kvw5kq9

From my testing humanDate.relativeTime(new Date().toString()) always outputs " ago". humanDate.relativeTime(new Date()) sometimes outputs "now" and sometimes outputs " ago"

My guess is that there is a bug in the library that occurs somewhere between "now" and "1 second ago"