Get the current Date and Time in Seconds using JavaScript

Get the current Date and Time in Seconds using JavaScript #

To get the current date and time in seconds:

1. Create a Date object using the Date() constructor.
2. Get a timestamp in milliseconds using the geTime() method.
3. Convert the result to seconds by dividing by 1000.

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const date = new Date();

const dateTimeInSeconds = Math.floor(date.getTime() / 1000);

// 👇️ 164328461
console.log(dateTimeInSeconds);

We used the Date() constructor to create a Date object that represents the current date and time.

The getTime method returns the number of milliseconds since the Unix Epoch (1st of January, 1970 00:00:00).

We can convert the milliseconds to seconds, by dividing the number by 1000.

The Math.floor function, rounds a number down if the number has a decimal, otherwise it returns the number as is.

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console.log(Math.floor(7.99)); // 👉️ 7
console.log(Math.floor(7.01)); // 👉️ 7
console.log(Math.floor(7)); // 👉️ 7

This ensures that we don't get a decimal when converting the milliseconds to seconds.

Make sure to pass the result from the division to the Math.floor function, because the number might have a decimal when converted to seconds.

If you need to create a Date object from a timestamp in seconds, multiply it by 1000 and pass it to the Date() constructor.

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const dateTimeInSeconds = 1642923027;

const date = new Date(dateTimeInSeconds * 1000);

console.log(date); // 👉️ Sun Jan 23 2022 09:30:27

Since the Date() constructor expects a value in milliseconds, we have to convert the seconds back to milliseconds when creating a Date object.

You can use this approach to get the date and time in seconds for any date.

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const date = new Date('2022-02-24T09:30:47');

console.log(date); // 👉️ Thu Feb 24 2022 09:30:47

const dateTimeInSeconds = Math.floor(date.getTime() / 1000);

// 👇️ 1645687847
console.log(dateTimeInSeconds);

We created a date object for the 24th of February 2022 and got the date and time in seconds using the same approach.

You can also use multiple, comma-separated parameters when creating a Date.

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const date = new Date(2022, 0, 23, 9, 30, 27);

console.log(date); // 👉️ Sun Jan 23 2022 09:30:27

const dateTimeInSeconds = Math.floor(date.getTime() / 1000);

// 👇️ 1642923027
console.log(dateTimeInSeconds);

We passed the year, month (January = 0, February = 1, etc), day, hour, minutes and seconds as parameters to the Date() constructor.

Note that the month is a zero-based value from 0 (January) to 11 (December).