JavaScript - Sort by Time String

Question

I am not very good with manipulating strings and need some help.

I have this function which takes 2 divs and gets a paragraph that contains a string representing time in a format that looks like this:

Friday, 7 August 2015, 18:21 PM

or

Tuesday, 21 August 2015, 10:45 AM

as 2 examples. I want to create a sort comparator function which will return the correct number if one is larger than the other but I am not sure how to extract days when the number can be 1 or 2 digits long and also take into account the exact time etc..

The time string is the innerText part which I have split where there is a comma so that atime and btime are arrays for each section.

Here is what I have done so far:

// format: Friday, 7 August 2015, 18:21 PM
// atime[0] --> Friday
// atime[1] -->  7 August 2015
// atime[2] -->  18:21 PM

function sortByTimeAdded(a, b) {
    var atime = (a.getElementsByClassName('timeAdded')[0].innerText).split(',');
    var btime = (b.getElementsByClassName('timeAdded')[0].innerText).split(',');

    /*if (atime[1] < btime[1]) {
        return -1;
    }
    if (atime[1] > btime[1]) {
        return 1;
    }*/
    return 0;
}

Thank you!

yes I do, just not sure how and also how to make it efficient. — Mayron
– Mayron, Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 13:59
innerText is not standard and unsupported by Firefox. Better use textContent. — Oriol
– Oriol, Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:00
Thanks! I had no idea. I better change some of my old code then :S — Mayron
– Mayron, Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:02

rhorvath · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-06 14:24:42Z

3

I suggest using Date.parse, I will show on example:

var a = "Friday, 7 August 2015, 18:21 PM"
Date.parse(a.substring(0, a.length-3))

with this you get timestamp you can use for comparison.

If you need date object just replace Date.parse with Date()

edited Aug 6, 2015 at 14:24

answered Aug 6, 2015 at 13:58

rhorvath

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7 Comments

Mayron Over a year ago

That definitely helps me to get started. Thanks for the tip!

Octav Zlatior Over a year ago

Alternately, if you do new Date() on your date string you get a nice js date object. Call getTime() on it and you get the unix milliseconds. Use that for direct int comparison.

Mayron Over a year ago

That's actually perfect. I didn't realize it converts all text to numbers, much more efficient then anything I could have done. Thank you again.

Octav Zlatior Over a year ago

Try without the PM at the end

Octav Zlatior Over a year ago

I mean, the date really is badly formatted, you should not have both 24 hour format and PM. It's either the one or the other.

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