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

Answer 2

jQuery provides its own method to get the timestamp:

var timestamp = $.now();

^{(besides it just implements (new Date).getTime() expression)}

REF: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.now/

Answer 3

In addition to the other options, if you want a dateformat ISO, you get can get it directly

console.log(new Date().toISOString());

Answer 4

Date, a native object in JavaScript is the way we get all data about time.

Just be careful in JavaScript the timestamp depends on the client computer set, so it's not 100% accurate timestamp. To get the best result, you need to get the timestamp from the server-side.

Anyway, my preferred way is using vanilla. This is a common way of doing it in JavaScript:

Date.now(); //return 1495255666921

In MDN it's mentioned as below:

The Date.now() method returns the number of milliseconds elapsed since 1 January 1970 00:00:00 UTC.
Because now() is a static method of Date, you always use it as Date.now().

If you using a version below ES5, Date.now(); not works and you need to use:

new Date().getTime();

Answer 5

The code Math.floor(new Date().getTime() / 1000) can be shortened to new Date / 1E3 | 0.

Consider to skip direct getTime() invocation and use | 0 as a replacement for Math.floor() function. It's also good to remember 1E3 is a shorter equivalent for 1000 (uppercase E is preferred than lowercase to indicate 1E3 as a constant).

As a result you get the following:

var ts = new Date / 1E3 | 0;

console.log(ts);

Answer 6

Any browsers not supported Date.now, you can use this for get current date time:

currentTime = Date.now() || +new Date()