Moment.js - Parse Date Time Ago

Question

I am saving my date like this in my mongo database:

Thu Oct 25 2018 17:30:03 GMT+0300 (EAT)

I would like to use moment.js to have in the front end like 1 hour ago or 3 hours ago. How would I go about this?

First, [parse](https://momentjs.com/docs/#/parsing/string-format/) the date (you may want to look into [moment's timezone extension](https://momentjs.com/timezone/)). After parsing it, you can find a [relative time](https://momentjs.com/docs/#/displaying/fromnow/) fairly easily. — c1moore, Oct 27 '18 at 00:33
Actually, since you have the UTC offset, you probably don't need the timezone extension. — c1moore, Oct 27 '18 at 00:37

score 114 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 27 '18 at 00:49

114

If you're using single locale try

moment('Thu Oct 25 2018 17:30:03 GMT+0300').fromNow(); //eg. 1 day ago, 2 hours ago etc

or

moment('Thu Oct 25 2018 17:30:03 GMT+0300').fromNow(true); //eg. 1 day, 2 hours

for more see docs

and:

answered Oct 27 '18 at 00:49

Paweł

Had to reconvert date first before saving with moment().format() – Dng Oct 28 '18 at 17:16
can we change this range given by moment ? – murli2308 May 12 '22 at 13:20

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 27 '18 at 00:44

you can add your date and then compare with the current time:

const timestamp = moment(dateFromDatabase, 'ddd MMM DD YYYY HH:mm:ss GMT Z').fromNow();

or you can also use diff()

const timestamp = moment(dateFromDatabase, 'ddd MMM DD YYYY HH:mm:ss GMT Z').diff(Date.now(), 'hours');

you can change the measurements using years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

For more information, you can take a look on here.

2 Answers2