Add Minutes to a Date in JavaScript

Add Minutes to a Date in JavaScript #

To add minutes to a date:

Use the getMinutes() method to get the minutes of the specific date.
Use the setMinutes() method to set the minutes for the date.
The setMinutes method takes the minutes as a parameter and sets the value for the date.

index.js

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function addMinutes(numOfMinutes, date = new Date()) {
  date.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() + numOfMinutes);

  return date;
}

// 👇️ Add 10 minutes to current Date
const result = addMinutes(10);

// 👇️ Add 20 minutes to other Date
const date = new Date('2022-03-14T09:25:30.820');

// 👇️ Mon Mar 14 2022 09:45:30
console.log(addMinutes(20, date));

We created a reusable function that takes the number of minutes and a Date object and adds the minutes to the date.

If no Date object is provided to the function, it uses the current date.

The getMinutes() method returns a number between 0 and 59 that represents the minutes in the given date.

The setMinutes() method takes a number representing the minutes as a parameter and sets the value on the date.

The JavaScript Date object automatically takes care of rolling over the hours, days, months and years if adding X minutes to the date changes their values.

index.js

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const date = new Date('2022-03-14T23:25:30.820');

date.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() + 36);

console.log(date); // 👉️ Tue Mar 15 2022 00:01:30

We added 36 minutes to the date, so the hour and the day of the month had to be adjusted.

The Date object would automatically take care of adjusting the month and year as well.

Note that the setMinutes method mutates the Date object it was called on. If you don't want to change the Date in place, you can create a copy of it before calling the method.

index.js

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function addMinutes(numOfMinutes, date = new Date()) {
  const dateCopy = new Date(date.getTime());

  dateCopy.setMinutes(dateCopy.getMinutes() + numOfMinutes);

  return dateCopy;
}

const date = new Date('2022-03-14T23:25:30.820');

const result = addMinutes(20, date);

console.log(result); // 👉️ Mon Mar 14 2022 23:45:30

console.log(date); // 👉️ Mon Mar 14 2022 23:25:30 (didn't change original)

The getTime method returns the number of milliseconds elapsed between 1st of January, 1970 00:00:00 and the given date.

We used the timestamp to create a copy of the Date object, so we don't mutate it in place when calling the setMinutes method.

Copying the date is quite useful when you have to use the original Date object in other places in your code.

In general, mutating function arguments is a bad practice, as passing the same parameter to the same function multiple times returns different results.

You might see the setMinutes method get called with 3 parameters. The parameters the method takes are:

minutes - a number representing the minutes.
seconds (optional) - a number representing the seconds.
milliseconds (optional) - a number between 0 and 999 that represents the milliseconds.

If you don't specify values for the seconds and milliseconds, the values returned from the getSeconds() and getMilliseconds() methods are used.

Add Minutes to a Date in JavaScript

Add Minutes to a Date in JavaScript #

Borislav Hadzhiev