JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition

Name

Date.getTime( ) — return a Date in milliseconds

Availability

JavaScript 1.0; JScript 1.0; ECMAScript v1

Synopsis

                  date.getTime( )

Returns

The millisecond representation of the specified Date object date; that is, the number of milliseconds between midnight (GMT) on 1/1/1970 and the date and time specified by date.

Description

getTime( ) converts a date and time to a single integer. This is useful when you want to compare two Date objects or to determine the time elapsed between two dates. Note that the millisecond representation of a date is independent of the time zone, so there is no getUTCTime( ) method in addition to this one. Don’t confuse this getTime( ) method with the getDay( ) and getDate( ) methods, which return the day of the week and the day of the month, respectively.

Date.parse( ) and Date.UTC( ) allow you to convert a date and time specification to millisecond representation without going through the overhead of first creating a Date object.

See Also

Date, Date.parse( ), Date.setTime( ), Date.UTC( )