title: Easiest way to extract unix timestamp in JS tip-number: 49 tip-username: nmrony tip-username-profile: https://github.com/nmrony tip-tldr: In Javascript you can easily get the unix timestamp
- /en/extract-unix-timestamp-easily/
We frequently need to calculate with unix timestamp. There are several ways to grab the timestamp. For current unix timestamp easiest and fastest way is
const dateTime = Date.now();
const timestamp = Math.floor(dateTime / 1000);or
const dateTime = new Date().getTime();
const timestamp = Math.floor(dateTime / 1000);To get unix timestamp of a specific date pass YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00Z as parameter of Date constructor. For example
const dateTime = new Date('2012-06-08').getTime();
const timestamp = Math.floor(dateTime / 1000);You can just add a + sign also when declaring a Date object like below
const dateTime = +new Date();
const timestamp = Math.floor(dateTime / 1000);or for specific date
const dateTime = +new Date('2012-06-08');
const timestamp = Math.floor(dateTime / 1000);Under the hood the runtime calls valueOf method of the Date object. Then the unary + operator calls toNumber() with that returned value. For detailed explanation please check the following links