Difference between two dates in years, months, day

Question

I've been searching for 4 hours now, and have not found a solution to get the difference between two dates in years, months, and days in JavaScript, like: 10th of April 2010 was 3 years, x month and y days ago.

There are lots of solutions, but they only offer the difference in the format of either days OR months OR years, or they are not correct (meaning not taking care of actual number of days in a month or leap years, etc). Is it really that difficult to do that?

I've had a look at:

• http://momentjs.com/ -> can only output the difference in either years, months, OR days
• http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/datedifference.shtml
• http://www.javascriptkit.com/jsref/date.shtml
• http://timeago.yarp.com/
• www.stackoverflow.com -> Search function

In php it is easy, but unfortunately I can only use client-side script on that project. Any library or framework that can do it would be fine, too.

Here are a list of expected outputs for date differences:

//Expected output should be: "1 year, 5 months".
diffDate(new Date('2014-05-10'), new Date('2015-10-10'));

//Expected output should be: "1 year, 4 months, 29 days".
diffDate(new Date('2014-05-10'), new Date('2015-10-09'));

//Expected output should be: "1 year, 3 months, 30 days".
diffDate(new Date('2014-05-10'), new Date('2015-09-09'));

//Expected output should be: "9 months, 27 days".
diffDate(new Date('2014-05-10'), new Date('2015-03-09'));

//Expected output should be: "1 year, 9 months, 28 days".
diffDate(new Date('2014-05-10'), new Date('2016-03-09'));

//Expected output should be: "1 year, 10 months, 1 days".
diffDate(new Date('2014-05-10'), new Date('2016-03-11'));

Answer 1

I used this simple code to get difference in Years, Months, days with current date.

var sdt = new Date('1972-11-30');
var difdt = new Date(new Date() - sdt);
alert((difdt.toISOString().slice(0, 4) - 1970) + "Y " + (difdt.getMonth()+1) + "M " + difdt.getDate() + "D");

Answer 2

@RajeevPNadig's answer was what I was looking for, but the code returns incorrect values as written.

My edit to his answer got rejected and I was told to post it as my own answer. This can return some results that feel a little weird, but aren't technically incorrect.

// startDate must be a
function dateAgo(date) {
    var startDate = new Date(date);
    var diffDate = new Date(new Date() - startDate);
    return ((diffDate.toISOString().slice(0, 4) - 1970) + "Y " +
        diffDate.getMonth() + "M " + (diffDate.getDate()-1) + "D");
}

Then you can use it like this:

// based on a current date of 2018-03-09
dateAgo('1972-11-30'); // "45Y 3M 9D"
dateAgo('2017-03-09'); // "1Y 0M 0D"
dateAgo('2018-01-09'); // "0Y 2M 0D"
dateAgo('2018-02-09'); // "0Y 0M 28D" -- a little odd, but not wrong
dateAgo('2018-02-01'); // "0Y 1M 5D" -- definitely "feels" wrong
dateAgo('2018-03-09'); // "0Y 0M 0D"

Things can get a little weird if you call dateAgo with the current date and aren't using an YYYY-MM-DD string, i.e.:

oneMinuteAgo = Date.now() - 60000;
dateAgo(oneMinuteAgo); // "0Y 11M 30D" -- ???

If your use case is just date strings, then this should work pretty well for most people.

Answer 3

I have created, yet another one, function for this purpose:

function dateDiff(date) {
    date = date.split('-');
    var today = new Date();
    var year = today.getFullYear();
    var month = today.getMonth() + 1;
    var day = today.getDate();
    var yy = parseInt(date[0]);
    var mm = parseInt(date[1]);
    var dd = parseInt(date[2]);
    var years, months, days;
    // months
    months = month - mm;
    if (day < dd) {
        months = months - 1;
    }
    // years
    years = year - yy;
    if (month * 100 + day < mm * 100 + dd) {
        years = years - 1;
        months = months + 12;
    }
    // days
    days = Math.floor((today.getTime() - (new Date(yy + years, mm + months - 1, dd)).getTime()) / (24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));
    //
    return {years: years, months: months, days: days};
}

Doesn't require any 3rd party libraries. Takes one argument -- date in YYYY-MM-DD format.

https://gist.github.com/lemmon/d27c2d4a783b1cf72d1d1cc243458d56

Answer 4

Yet another solution, based on some PHP code. The strtotime function, also based on PHP, can be found here: http://phpjs.org/functions/strtotime/.

Date.dateDiff = function(d1, d2) {
    d1 /= 1000;
    d2 /= 1000;
    if (d1 > d2) d2 = [d1, d1 = d2][0];

    var diffs = {
        year: 0,
        month: 0,
        day: 0,
        hour: 0,
        minute: 0,
        second: 0
    }

    $.each(diffs, function(interval) {
        while (d2 >= (d3 = Date.strtotime('+1 '+interval, d1))) {
            d1 = d3;
            ++diffs[interval];
        }
    });

    return diffs;
};

Usage:

> d1 = new Date(2000, 0, 1)
Sat Jan 01 2000 00:00:00 GMT+0100 (CET)

> d2 = new Date(2013, 9, 6)
Sun Oct 06 2013 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST)

> Date.dateDiff(d1, d2)
Object {
  day: 5
  hour: 0
  minute: 0
  month: 9
  second: 0
  year: 13
}

Answer 5

To calculate the difference between two dates in Years, Months, Days, Minutes, Seconds, Milliseconds using TypeScript/ JavaScript

dateDifference(actualDate) {
            // Calculate time between two dates:
            const date1 = actualDate; // the date you already commented/ posted
            const date2: any = new Date(); // today

            let r = {}; // object for clarity
            let message: string;

            const diffInSeconds = Math.abs(date2 - date1) / 1000;
            const days = Math.floor(diffInSeconds / 60 / 60 / 24);
            const hours = Math.floor(diffInSeconds / 60 / 60 % 24);
            const minutes = Math.floor(diffInSeconds / 60 % 60);
            const seconds = Math.floor(diffInSeconds % 60);
            const milliseconds = 
           Math.round((diffInSeconds - Math.floor(diffInSeconds)) * 1000);

            const months = Math.floor(days / 31);
            const years = Math.floor(months / 12);

            // the below object is just optional 
            // if you want to return an object instead of a message
            r = {
                years: years,
                months: months,
                days: days,
                hours: hours,
                minutes: minutes,
                seconds: seconds,
                milliseconds: milliseconds
            };

            // check if difference is in years or months
            if (years === 0 && months === 0) {
                // show in days if no years / months
                if (days > 0) {
                    if (days === 1) {
                        message = days + ' day';
                    } else { message = days + ' days'; }
                }  else if (hours > 0) {
                    if (hours === 1) {
                        message = hours + ' hour';
                    } else {
                        message = hours + ' hours';
                    }
                } else {
                    // show in minutes if no years / months / days
                    if (minutes === 1) {
                        message = minutes + ' minute';
                    } else {message = minutes + ' minutes';}  
                }
            } else if (years === 0 && months > 0) {
                // show in months if no years
                if (months === 1) {
                    message = months + ' month';
                } else {message = months + ' months';}
            } else if (years > 0) {
                // show in years if years exist
                if (years === 1) {
                    message = years + ' year';
                } else {message = years + ' years';}
            }

            return 'Posted ' + message + ' ago'; 
     // this is the message a user see in the view
        }

However, you can update the above logic for the message to show seconds and milliseconds too or else use the object 'r' to format the message whatever way you want.

If you want to directly copy the code, you can view my gist with the above code here

Answer 6

   let startDate = moment(new Date('2017-05-12')); // yyyy-MM-dd
   let endDate = moment(new Date('2018-09-14')); // yyyy-MM-dd

   let Years = newDate.diff(date, 'years');
   let months = newDate.diff(date, 'months');
   let days = newDate.diff(date, 'days');

console.log("Year: " + Years, ", Month: " months-(Years*12), ", Days: " days-(Years*365.25)-((365.25*(days- (Years*12)))/12));

Above snippet will print: Year: 1, Month: 4, Days: 2