Duration

overview

A duration is a distance between two instants.

We initialize a duration with a quantity of time, or with a difference between two instants.

We use the Luxon library.

output durations (Luxon)

set the duration units

We set the duration units (if needed) so that the subsequent outputs make use of them.

• rescale() determines the units to use automatically. It eagerly uses the higher magnitude units. Then it sets them as the current units:

dur.toHuman() // '1000000 milliseconds'
dur.rescale().toHuman() // '16 minutes, 40 seconds'

• shiftTo() aims to set the units imperatively, and set them as the current units:

dur.toHuman() // '1 day, 12 hours'
dur.shiftTo("hours", "minutes").toHuman() // '36 hours, 0 minutes'
dur.shiftTo("minutes").toHuman() // '2160 minutes'

output the configured, human friendly duration

toHuman() outputs a human-readable description. It uses the units that were set as the current units (configuration).

dur.toHuman() // '1 day, 12 hours'
dur.toHuman({ listStyle: "long" }) // '1 day and 12 hours'

duration instantiation (Luxon)

The way we instantiate determines the defaults units being used.

milliseconds quantity

const dur = Duration.fromMillis(1_000_000) // 1000 seconds
// dur.toHuman() // '1000000 milliseconds'

Duration.fromMillis(d2.getTime() - d1.getTime())

calendar components as a quantity

const dur = Duration.fromObject({ hour: 36 })
// dur.toHuman() // '36 hours'

from difference between two DateTime instances

In this instantiation, we can set the units being used:

const dur = zdt2.diff(zdt1, ["years", "months", "days"])
// dur.toHuman() // "3 years, 2 months, 14 days"