GDATE, Mate!

gdate (pronounced g'date, if you like) is a light-weight extension to the native Date object. Date has a surprising amount of functionality built in, but equally surprising is the functionality it's lacking. (seriously, checkout the code I wrote.... it's nothing mind-blowing, and feels so intuitive).

So like many others on npm, I wrote an extension to it that you can import into whatever project you like. It is tested (see the linked github), and open-source? still in development? If anyone would like easy open-source credits to put on a resumé, feel welcome to add an issue!

Import it with the usual installation commands in terminal i.e. npm install gdate.

Features:

• Built-in time properties (like hours and days ) for easy reference

• advanceDateBy: Get new Date instances a set amount of time away

    const now = new Date();
    const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);
    const yesterday = gdate.advanceDateBy(-1 * gdate.day, now);

• unitsBetween: Get the number of units between 2 dates (order agnostic)

  const now = new Date();
  const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);
  const hours = gdate.unitsBetween(gdate.hour, now, tomorrow); // 24

• isBetween: returns true if a given Date is between two reference dates, inclusively. Otherwise, false

  const now = new Date();
  const hourLater = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.hour, now);
  const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);

  gdate.isBetween(now, hourLater, tomorrow) // true
  gdate.isBetween(now, tomorrow, hourLater) // false

• isBefore: return true if a date is strictly before a reference. else false

  const now = new Date();
  const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);

  gdate.isBefore(now, tomorrow) // true
  gdate.isBefore(tomorrow, now) // false

• isAfter: return true if a date is strictly before a reference. else false

  const now = new Date();
  const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);

  gdate.isAfter(now, tomorrow) // false
  gdate.isAfter(tomorrow, now) // true

• createYYYYMMDD: converts the date into a string of the form YYYY/MM/DD

  const epoch = new Date(0)

  gdate.createYYYYMMDD(epoch) // "1970/01/01"

getRelativeDistance: Returns a string of the distance between 2 Dates in the largest whole unit of time (with correct pluralization). Great for Reddit-Style Time-stamps

  const now = new Date();
  const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);
  const year = gdate.advanceDateBy(3 * gdate.year, now);

  gdate.getRelativeDistance(now, tomorrow) // "1 day"
  gdate.getRelativeDistance(now, year) // "3 years"

getApproximate: returns the whole number of units that a given number of milliseconds corresponds to, rounded down.

  const now = new Date();
  const tomorrow = gdate.advanceDateBy(1 * gdate.day, now);

  const nowInMS = now.getTime();
  const tomInMS = now.getTime();

  gdate.getApproximate(gdate.hour, tomInMS - nowInMS) // 24