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smartdate.js

smartdate.js is a lightweight (~4KB minified) dependency-free library for displaying date and time in users' timezones, in human-friendly format. Datetime string is updated dynamically without page reload. This is fast, tested with hundreds of date objects on a single page.

Built-in locales: English, Russian. Additional locales can be added easily.

Browser compatibility: tested in IE8+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Example output

Examples of what your users could see:

English:

  • Dec 7, 2014
  • tomorrow at 6:42 am
  • today at 3:14 pm
  • in 2 min
  • in less than a minute
  • less than a minute ago
  • 12 min ago
  • today at 1:07 am
  • yesterday at 9:40 pm
  • Dec 3, 2014

Russian:

  • 7 дек 2014
  • завтра в 06:42
  • сегодня в 15:14
  • через 2 мин
  • в течение минуты
  • менее 1 мин назад
  • 12 мин назад
  • сегодня в 01:07
  • вчера в 21:40
  • 3 дек 2014

Text is updated dynamically as time goes by:

in 2 min -> in 1 min -> in less than a minute -> less than a minute ago -> ...

Datetime tags can also have a title attribute with full date time string in user timezone and locale (displayed on mouse over). This is a configurable option, turned on by default.

Installation

Download smartdate.js or smartdate.min.js from this repository, or install with Yarn:

yarn add smartdate

Usage

smartdate.js looks for tags of pre-defined type and class on your page, gets Unix timestamp (in seconds) from them and replaces tag contents to date time string.

Add as many datetimes to your page as needed in the following format:

<span class="smartdate" data-timestamp="1418734998"></span>

Initialize smartdate.js by calling smartdate.init(). This needs to be done only once, no matter how many datetime tags you added. The best place for this code is the end of the page, below all datetime tags:

<script src="/smartdate.js"></script>
<script>
  smartdate.init();
</script>

or, if you're using RequireJS:

<script>
  require(['smartdate'], function(smartdate) {
    smartdate.init();
  });
</script>

When .init() is called, smartdate updates all datetime tags on the page and schedules itself to update them every 5 seconds (configurable).

Configuration options

smartdate.init() takes an optional parameter, object with configuration options. For example, if you'd like to switch locale to Russian, initialize smartdate as following:

smartdate.init({
  locale: 'ru'
});

All configuration options:

  • locale - 'en' or 'ru'. Default is 'en';
  • mode - 'auto', 'date', 'past' or 'future'. Default is 'auto'. Defines how smartdate renders datetime text.
    • auto - use human-friendly time string for nearest date and time, from yesterday to tomorrow, like shown on examples above. Use date, if date is outside of yesterday <-> tomorrow interval;
    • date - always show dates, even for nearest date and time;
    • datetime - show date and time up to minutes;
    • past - prevent future dates from being shown. If the date is in the future, 'less than a minute ago' will be shown (or its equivalent in Russian). This could be helpful to deal with inaccurate clock on user machines. For example, if your app shows timestamps for article comments, and user clock is behind server clock by 5 minutes, the most recent comments could be shown for her as coming from future - 'in 5 min', and this could be confusing. Set mode to 'past' to fix this.
    • future - opposite to past, prevents past dates from being shown. If the date is in the past, 'in less than a minute' will be shown (or its equivalent in Russian).
  • fullMonthNames - true or false, default is false. Use full or short month names;
  • capitalize - true or false, default is false. Tells smartdate to capitalize produced date strings;
  • tagName - tag type to look for. Default is 'span';
  • className - tag class to look for. Default is 'smartdate';
  • addTitle - true or false, default is true. Tells smartdate to add title attribute with full datetime string in users' locale;
  • updateInterval - interval in milliseconds, how often should smartdate update datetime tags. Default is 5000 (5 seconds). Set it to null if you'd like to disable auto-update.

Overriding global configuration options

You can override global configuration options on per-tag level, using data-attributes with configuration option names. For example, if you'd like to render a particular tag in "date" mode with full month names:

<span class="smartdate"
    data-timestamp="1418734998"
    data-mode="date"
    data-fullmonthnames="true"></span>

Note: all options can be overridden except the following: tagName, className, updateInterval. These 3 can only be defined on global level.

Configuration options can also be overridden in smartdate.format() and smartdate.tag(), as described below.

Custom date formatting

Smartdate performs date formatting by calling function with mode name in smartdate.locale['<locale>'] object. Function is called with 2 parameters:

  • date - instance of Date object, representing the date to be formatted;
  • fullMonthNames - boolean flag indicating current fullMonthNames setting.

You can use this behaviour to create your own formatting functions or to overwrite built-in ones. Note that you can re-use existing formatting functions in current locale by referencing them with 'this'.

Examples:

// Create a new 'special' mode in English locale
smartdate.locale.en.special = function(date, fullMonthNames) {
  return this.date(date, fullMonthNames) + ' | ' + this.time(date);
};
// Use 'special' mode as a default for all dates on the page
smartdate.init({mode: 'special'});
// Overwrite built-in time formatting for all modes in Russian locale,
// display time with seconds.
smartdate.locale.ru.originalTime = smartdate.locale.ru.time;
smartdate.locale.ru.time = function(date) {
  return this.originalTime(date) + ':' + smartdate.pad(date.getSeconds());
};
// since .time() is used internally by 'auto', 'future', 'past' and 'datetime'
// modes, we now have all of them displaying time with seconds.
smartdate.init();

API

smartdate.init()
// or
smartdate.init(options)

Inititalize smartdate. Takes an optional parameter, object with configuration options. It basically does the following:

  1. performs options configuration using .setup();
  2. immediately renders all date tags found on the page using .render() method;
  3. schedules .render() to run every updateInterval milliseconds (optional). See Usage and Configuration options above for details.
smartdate.setup(options)

Configure smartdate, takes object with configuration options as a parameter. See Configuration options above for details.

smartdate.format(date)
// or
smartdate.format(date, options)

Returns string representation of a date using current format and locale settings. Input can be an instance of Date object or unix timestamp in seconds. Accepts an optional second parameter, object with configuration options. Options provided here take precedence of global configuration.

smartdate.pad(num)

Utility function, pad given number with zero up to 2 digits.

smartdate.render()

If you update your page contents dynamically with JavaScript, you may want to update datetime strings right after you updated date tags on the page. In such case call .render() - this is exactly the same function which .init() uses internally to update everything.

smartdate.tag(date)
// or
smartdate.tag(date, options)

Construct a smartdate tag. Input can be an instance of Date object or unix timestamp in seconds. Accepts an optional second parameter, object with configuration options. Options provided here take precedence of global configuration. Returns HTML element which you could paste into the DOM, like this:

// Add tag generated by smartdate to DOM,
// as a child of parent element identified by '<selector>'

// pure JS example
document.querySelector('<selector>').appendChild(smartdate.tag(947765593));

// jQuery example
$('<selector>').append(smartdate.tag(947765593));

Report bugs

Report issues to the project's Issues Tracking on Github.

License

MIT