parse

Summary

Parses a string containing a date, and returns the number of milliseconds between that date and midnight, January 1, 1970.

Syntax

Date.parse( dateVal )

Examples

The following example illustrates the use of the Date.parse function.

var dateString = "November 1, 1997 10:15 AM";
 var mSec = Date.parse(dateString);
 document.write(mSec);
 // Output: 878404500000

The following example returns the difference between the date provided and 1/1/1970.

var minMilli = 1000 * 60;
 var hrMilli = minMilli * 60;
 var dyMilli = hrMilli * 24;

 var ms = Date.parse(new Date("June 1, 1990"));
 var days = Math.round(ms / dyMilli);

 var dateStr = "";
 dateStr += "There are " + days + " days ";
 dateStr += "between 01/01/1970 and " + testDate;
 document.write(dateStr);

 // Output: There are 7456 days between 01/01/1970 and Fri Jun 1 00:00:00 PDT 1990

Remarks

The required dateVal argument is either a string containing a date or a VT_DATE value retrieved from an ActiveX object or other object. For information about date strings that the Date.parse function can parse. see Formatting Date and Time Strings (Windows Scripting - JScript).

The Date.parse function returns an integer value representing the number of milliseconds between midnight, January 1, 1970 and the date supplied in dateVal.

Attributions

Microsoft Developer Network: Article