I'm thinking of strings like "one minute ago" or "3 weeks ago", that kind of thing.

I could easily port examples I've found in other languages but there's no need to reinvent the wheel if this stuff is already out there.

I'm thinking of strings like "one minute ago" or "3 weeks ago", that kind of thing.

I could easily port examples I've found in other languages but there's no need to reinvent the wheel if this stuff is already out there.

• javascript
• date
• time
• node.js

• This might help. Shows you a fuzzy date based on the current time. – Raynos Commented May 22, 2011 at 17:55

3 Answers 3

I wrote a library called moment that does what DateJS does, only it's smaller, doesn't modify Date.prototype, and works in both the browser and NodeJS.

npm install moment

Usage:

moment(1316369911638).fromNow() // "3 minutes ago"

It supports i18n and customization as well, all strings are exposed for modification.

Something you can try is date.js: http://www.datejs./

To make it node patible at the very bottom of the script add the line:

module.exports = Date;

Then you can require it:

var date = require('./date');

Assuming date.js is in the same folder, otherwise modify the require path.

Then a simple code sample to test is:

console.log( date.today().next().thursday() )

I've found that require(./date) (i.e. using datejs directly) and datejs from npm install datejs don't work as advertised, at least with node v0.4.9.

The datetime module seems to work for me though:

$ npm install datetime
[email protected] ./node_modules/datetime 
└── [email protected]
$ node --version
v0.4.9
$ node
> var datetime = require('datetime')
> now = new Date()
Thu, 14 Jul 2011 05:50:06 GMT
> # wait for a bit
... 
... 
> datetime.formatAgo(now)
'18 seconds ago'