How can I get the current UTC timestamp in JavaScript? I want to do this so I can send timestamps from the client-side that are independent of their timezone.
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As wizzard pointed out, the correct method is,
new Date().getTime();
or under Javascript 1.5, just
Date.now();
From the documentation,
The value returned by the getTime method is the number of milliseconds since 1 January 1970 00:00:00 UTC.
If you wanted to make a time stamp without milliseconds you can use,
Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000);
I wanted to make this an answer so the correct method is more visible.
You can compare ExpExc's and Narendra Yadala's results to the method above at http://jsfiddle.net/JamesFM/bxEJd/, and verify with http://www.unixtimestamp.com/ or by running date +%s
on a Unix terminal.
new Date().getTime();
For more information, see @James McMahon's answer.
You can use Date.UTC method to get the time stamp at the UTC timezone.
Usage:
var now = new Date;
var utc_timestamp = Date.UTC(now.getUTCFullYear(),now.getUTCMonth(), now.getUTCDate() ,
now.getUTCHours(), now.getUTCMinutes(), now.getUTCSeconds(), now.getUTCMilliseconds());
Live demo here http://jsfiddle.net/naryad/uU7FH/1/
"... that are independent of their timezone"
var timezone = d.getTimezoneOffset() // difference in minutes from GMT
Source: Stackoverflow.com