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Day.js

Manipulating Dates with Day.js — Relative Time

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Day.js is a JavaScript library that lets us manipulate dates in our apps.

In this article, we’ll look at how to use Day.js to manipulate dates in our JavaScript apps.

Get the Time from Now

We get the time from now with a Day.js date by using the fromNow method available with the relativeTime plugin.

For instance, we can write:

const dayjs = require("dayjs");  
const relativeTime = require("dayjs/plugin/relativeTime");  
dayjs.extend(relativeTime);

const result = dayjs("2000-01-01").fromNow();  
console.log(result);

Then we get '22 years ago‘ as the value of result in year 2021.

We can also pass in true to fromNow to remove the suffix from the returned string.

For instance, we can write:

const dayjs = require("dayjs");  
const relativeTime = require("dayjs/plugin/relativeTime");  
dayjs.extend(relativeTime);

const result = dayjs("2000-01-01").fromNow(true);  
console.log(result);

Then result is '22 years' in year 2021.

Get the Time Relative to a Given Time

We can get the time relative to the given time with the from method.

For instance, we can write:

const dayjs = require("dayjs");  
const relativeTime = require("dayjs/plugin/relativeTime");  
dayjs.extend(relativeTime);

const a = dayjs("2020-01-01");  
const result = dayjs("1999-01-01").from(a);  
console.log(result);

Then we get the time difference between a and January 1, 1999.

Therefore, result is '21 years ago‘ .

We can get the relative time string without the suffix if we pass in true as the 2nd argument of from .

Conclusion

Day.js is a JavaScript library that lets us manipulate dates in our apps.

By John Au-Yeung

Web developer specializing in React, Vue, and front end development.

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