Retrieve UTC timestamp with Javascript

Question

I have an app where I don't care about time zones and need only UTC time. This means my timestamps need to match UTC time.

My goal is to get 2 UTC timestamps for current day. Let's say UTC time is June 21st 13:04:47.

For this time I would like to get timestamp for midnight of that day June 21st 00:00:00 and timestamp for 24 hours later June 22nd 00:00:00. Timestamps for those two times are 1466467200000 and 1466553600000.

This is how I am currently doing it:

    var today = new Date();
    var todayStart = new Date(Date.UTC(today.getUTCFullYear(), today.getUTCMonth(), today.getUTCDate(), 0, 0, 0));
    var todayEnd = new Date();
    todayEnd.setTime(todayStart.getTime() + (24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));

    console.log("start of the day: " + todayStart.getTime())
    console.log("end of the day: " + todayEnd.getTime());

This returns correct results but I am wondering is this reliable and is it the right way to accomplish what I want. Thank you for your help.

Have you tried Moment.js? It is a lifesaver when it comes to dealing with dates in JS: momentjs.com — Jeremy Harris
– Jeremy Harris, Commented Jun 21, 2016 at 13:19
Possible duplicate of How do you get a timestamp in JavaScript? — Heretic Monkey
– Heretic Monkey, Commented Jun 22, 2016 at 1:25
@MikeMcCaughan Not really a duplicate, that one is about actually getting a timestamp at all. This code already demonstrates a knowledge of getTime. This question is asking how to manipulate the Date object to get a timestamp for a specific time of day. — Useless Code
– Useless Code, Commented Jun 22, 2016 at 1:29
The answers of that question answer this question. Still needs 4 others to agree with me anyway... — Heretic Monkey
– Heretic Monkey, Commented Jun 22, 2016 at 1:36

Useless Code · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-22 01:21:01Z

1

The way you are doing it works and should be reliable. If I had written it I would have done it a little differently.

var start = new Date(),
  end;

// set midnight today
start.setUTCHours(0);
start.setUTCMinutes(0);
start.setUTCSeconds(0);
start.setUTCMilliseconds(0);

// set to midnight tomorrow
end = new Date(start);
end.setUTCDate(start.getUTCDate() + 1);

console.log("start of the day: " + start.getTime());
console.log("end of the day: " + end.getTime());

This code creates the start date as the current date/time and then zeros out the time portions. Then getting 24 hours later is just a matter of creating a duplicate Date and incrementing the date by 1. It does require a little more code but it makes it explicit what you are doing and will probably be easier to read and comprehend when maintaining the code in the future.

answered Jun 22, 2016 at 1:21

Useless Code

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Comments

YemSalat · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-22 12:39:42Z

1

I would strongly discourage use of native Date object for this.

Check out moment and moment-timezone - they cover all your use cases out of the box: http://momentjs.com/

With that you can do: moment().tz('Europe/Berlin').utc()

edited Jun 22, 2016 at 12:39

answered Jun 22, 2016 at 1:28

YemSalat

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