How do you get a timestamp in JavaScript?

Question

How can I get a timestamp in JavaScript?

Something similar to Unix timestamp, that is, a single number that represents the current time and date. Either as a number

Answer 1

As of writing this, the top answer is 9 years old, and a lot has changed since then - not least, we have near universal support for a non-hacky solution:

Date.now()

If you want to be absolutely certain that this won't break in some ancient (pre ie9) browser, you can put it behind a check, like so:

const currentTimestamp = (!Date.now ? +new Date() : Date.now());

This will return the milliseconds since epoch time, of course, not seconds.

MDN Documentation on Date.now