How to Compare Dates in JavaScript

Dates are a really common data type developers work with. From timestamps of certain actions, to reports, sign up features and limited-time access in systems that require subscriptions.

Introduction

Dates are a really common data type developers work with. From timestamps of certain actions, to reports, sign up features and limited-time access in systems that require subscriptions - we oftentimes have to compare dates.

That is, we compare if a date is after or before another, if the date is today, how many days there are between dates, etc.

In this article, we'll take a look at how to compare two dates in JavaScript, helping us deduce whether a date is before or after another.

The Date Object in JavaScript

Web developers commonly use external packages (like Moment.js) to handle date-time operations. But, as the modern web evolved, JavaScript introduced a new object constructor called Date to handle date-time operations.

This means that you don't need an external library to perform rudimentary checks and operations, which makes it easier to perform these things in Vanilla JS.

The Date class is really simple to understand under the hood - it just stores Unix time measured in milliseconds.

Unix time is measured as the number of seconds elapsed since the Unix epoch (00:00:00 UTC 1 January 1970), which is a completely arbitrary date.

Even though this implementation seems a bit simplistic, the addition of the Date class was quite a big improvement, since there was finally a level of abstraction between developers and raw dates.

Now, let's look at different ways to compare two dates using Date objects.

javascript

JavaScript Shopping Cart - javascript shopping cart tutorial for beginnersBuy me a coffee 🍺 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ziddahSource Code: https://bit....

The essential JavaScript concepts that you should understand - For successful developing and to pass a work interview

JavaScript data types are kept easy. While JavaScript data types are mostly similar to other programming languages; some of its data types can be unique. Here, we’ll outline the data types of JavaScript.

Introduction With Basic JavaScript - Unlike most programming languages, the JavaScript language has no concept of input or output. It is designed to run as a scripting language in a host environment, and it is up to the host environment to provide mechanisms for communicating with the outside world.

The main goal of this article is help to readers to understand that how memory management system performs in JavaScript. I will use a shorthand such as GC which means Garbage Collection. When the browsers use Javascript, they need any memory location to store objects, functions, and all other things. Let’s deep in dive that how things going to work in GC.