Javascript equivalent of php's strtotime()?

Question

In PHP, you can easily convert an English textual datetime description into a proper date with strtotime().

Is there anything similar in Javascript?

Answer 1

Yes, it is. And it is supported in all major browser:

var ts = Date.parse("date string");

The only difference is that this function returns milliseconds instead of seconds, so you need to divide the result by 1000.

Check what valid formats can JavaScript parse.

Answer 2

I jealous the strtotime() in php, but I do mine in javascript using moment. Not as sweet as that from php, but does the trick neatly too.

// first day of the month
var firstDayThisMonth = moment(firstDayThisMonth).startOf('month').toDate();

Go back and forth using the subtract() and add() with the endOf() and startOf():

// last day of previous month
var yesterMonthLastDay = moment(yesterMonthLastDay).subtract(1,'months').endOf('month').toDate();