Compare 2 ISO 8601 timestamps and output seconds/minutes difference
I need to write JavaScript that’s going to allow me to compare two ISO timestamps and then print out the difference between them, for example: “32 seconds”.
Below is a function I found on Stack Overflow, it turns an ordinary date into an ISO formatted one. So, that’s the first thing out the way, getting the current time in ISO format.
The next thing I need to do is get another ISO timestamp to compare it with, well, I have that stored in an object. It can be accessed like this: marker.timestamp (as shown in the code below). Now I need to compare those two two timestamps and work out the difference between them. If it’s < 60 seconds, it should output in seconds, if it’s > 60 seconds, it should output 1 minute and 12 seconds ago for example.
Thanks!
function ISODateString(d){
function pad(n){return n<10 ? '0'+n : n}
return d.getUTCFullYear()+'-'
+ pad(d.getUTCMonth()+1)+'-'
+ pad(d.getUTCDate())+'T'
+ pad(d.getUTCHours())+':'
+ pad(d.getUTCMinutes())+':'
+ pad(d.getUTCSeconds())+'Z'}
var date = new Date();
var currentISODateTime = ISODateString(date);
var ISODateTimeToCompareWith = marker.timestamp;
// Now how do I compare them?
Comparing two dates is as simple as
var differenceInMs = dateNewer - dateOlder;
So, convert the timestamps back into Date instances
var d1 = new Date('2013-08-02T10:09:08Z'), // 10:09 to
d2 = new Date('2013-08-02T10:20:08Z'); // 10:20 is 11 mins
Get the difference
var diff = d2 - d1;
Format this as desired
if (diff > 60e3) console.log(
Math.floor(diff / 60e3), 'minutes ago'
);
else console.log(
Math.floor(diff / 1e3), 'seconds ago'
);
// 11 minutes ago
I would just store the Date object as part of your ISODate class. You can just do the string conversion when you need to display it, say in a toString method. That way you can just use very simple logic with the Date class to determine the difference between two ISODates:
var difference = ISODate.date - ISODateToCompare.date;
if (difference > 60000) {
// display minutes and seconds
} else {
// display seconds
}
I’d recommend getting the time in seconds from both timestamps, like this:
// currentISODateTime and ISODateTimeToCompareWith are ISO 8601 strings as defined in the original post
var firstDate = new Date(currentISODateTime),
secondDate = new Date(ISODateTimeToCompareWith),
firstDateInSeconds = firstDate.getTime() / 1000,
secondDateInSeconds = secondDate.getTime() / 1000,
difference = Math.abs(firstDateInSeconds - secondDateInSeconds);
And then working with the difference. For example:
if (difference < 60) {
alert(difference + ' seconds');
} else if (difference < 3600) {
alert(Math.floor(difference / 60) + ' minutes');
} else {
alert(Math.floor(difference / 3600) + ' hours');
}
Important: I used Math.abs to compare the dates in seconds to obtain the absolute difference between them, regardless of which is earlier.
