Name

Date.getTime() — return a Date in milliseconds

Synopsis

date.getTime()

Returns

The millisecond representation of the specified Date object date—that is, the number of milliseconds between midnight (GMT) on 1/1/1970 and the date and time specified by date.

Description

getTime() converts a date and time to a single integer. This is useful when you want to compare two Date objects or to determine the time elapsed between two dates. Note that the millisecond representation of a date is independent of the time zone, so there is no getUTCTime() method in addition to this one. Don’t confuse this getTime() method with the getDay() and getDate() methods, which return the day of the week and the day of the month, respectively.

Date.parse() and Date.UTC() allow you to convert a date and time specification to a millisecond representation without going through the overhead of first creating a Date object.

Get JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.