Format a datetime in PowerShell to JSON as \/Date(1411704000000)\/

Question

I want to get the current date as a string in the following format:

\\/Date(1411762618805)\\/

I have been fighting with PowerShell and have trie

Answer 1

So, the wonderful thing about JSON dates is... nothing. They are evil, and deserve to be punished.

So, what is a JSON date? It is the number of milliseconds since Unix Epoc (Jan 1, 1970), well, UTC time that is. So, that's great and all, but how do we get that without using the ConvertTo-JSON cmdlet? Easiest way I know of is this:

[int64]([datetime]::UtcNow)-(get-date "1/1/1970").TotalMilliseconds

That will get you the current date and time formatted for JSON. If you want a specific date or date/time you could do it, but you have to adjust for time zone, which we can do, it just gets long:

$target = "2/2/2014 6:32 PM"
[int64]((get-date $target).addhours((([datetime]::UtcNow)-(get-date)).Hours)-(get-date "1/1/1970")).totalmilliseconds
1391391120000

That would be the kick-off time for the last Super Bowl.