How do I subtract two dates?

Question

I have a date stored in a database as a string. It looks like this: Tue Aug 23 2016 00:00:00 GMT-0500 (CDT)

I basically want to tell if today's date is before or after the date in the database.

The code below should sort of explain what I want. The problem is that after the difference variable doesn't return a number variable, which is what I need.

var expire = value.vaccines;
var today = new Date();
var difference = today-expire;

if(difference <= 0){
    $(element).css({"color": "#0040ff"});
}

Any ideas on how to subtract these two dates and get a number value?

Probably duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4944750/how-to-subtract-date-time-in-javascript — Nerlin, Aug 10 '16 at 15:23
@Nerlin Or [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/492994/compare-two-dates-with-javascript), assuming `value.vaccines` has been constructed correctly. — James Thorpe, Aug 10 '16 at 15:25
*"The problem is that after the difference variable doesn't return a number variable, which is what I need."* What type is the value of `difference` instead? — Felix Kling, Aug 10 '16 at 16:07

Yosvel Quintero · Answer 1 · 2016-08-10T16:03:13.747

0

You can just you can calculate the difference between the two Date objects and get the absolute value with Math.abs():

var today = new Date(),
    expire = value.vaccines,
    difference = Math.abs(today - expire); // difference in milliseconds

if (difference <= 0) {
    $(element).css({
        "color": "#0040ff"
    });
}

Check that expire is a valid Date object.

edited Aug 10 '16 at 16:03

answered Aug 10 '16 at 15:26

Yosvel Quintero

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Expire and today both look like this: Tue Aug 23 2016 00:00:00 GMT-0500 (CDT) – Ellen Schlechter Aug 10 '16 at 15:52

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

0

Assuming both your objects are Date

Although you only require the returned value in milliseconds, I've added the extra step of formatting the value.

Math.floor((today - expire) / (1000*60*60*24))

Taken from Here

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

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answered Aug 10 '16 at 15:26

IronAces

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How do I subtract two dates?

2 Answers2