How to Check the Difference, in Seconds, Between Two Dates

Get time difference between two dates in seconds

The Code

var startDate = new Date();
// Do your operations
var endDate   = new Date();
var seconds = (endDate.getTime() - startDate.getTime()) / 1000;

Or even simpler (endDate - startDate) / 1000 as pointed out in the comments unless you're using typescript.

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The explanation

You need to call the getTime() method for the Date objects, and then simply subtract them and divide by 1000 (since it's originally in milliseconds). As an extra, when you're calling the getDate() method, you're in fact getting the day of the month as an integer between 1 and 31 (not zero based) as opposed to the epoch time you'd get from calling the getTime() method, representing the number of milliseconds since January 1st 1970, 00:00

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Rant

Depending on what your date related operations are, you might want to invest in integrating a library such as date.js or moment.js which make things so much easier for the developer, but that's just a matter of personal preference.

For example in moment.js we would do moment1.diff(moment2, "seconds") which is beautiful.

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Useful docs for this answer

• Why 1970?
• Date object
• Date's getTime method
• Date's getDate method
• Need more accuracy than just seconds?

How do I check the difference, in seconds, between two dates?

if you want to compute differences between two known dates, use total_seconds like this:

import datetime as dt

a = dt.datetime(2013,12,30,23,59,59)
b = dt.datetime(2013,12,31,23,59,59)

(b-a).total_seconds()

86400.0

#note that seconds doesn't give you what you want:
(b-a).seconds

0

In Java, how do I get the difference in seconds between 2 dates?

Not familiar with DateTime...

If you have two Dates you can call getTime on them to get millseconds, get the diff and divide by 1000. For example

Date d1 = ...;
Date d2 = ...;
long seconds = (d2.getTime()-d1.getTime())/1000;

If you have Calendar objects you can call

c.getTimeInMillis()

and do the same

Time difference in seconds between given two dates

Assuming GNU implementation based OS, you can use date's option %s and -d to calculate the time difference in seconds using command substitution and arithmetic operations.

START="2019-01-05 23:52:00"
END="2019-01-06 00:02:10"

Time_diff_in_secs=$(($(date -d "$END" +%s) - $(date -d "$START" +%s)))
echo $Time_diff_in_secs

Output:

610

Hope this helps!!!

Difference between two time.Time objects

You may use Time.Sub() to get the difference between the 2 time.Time values, result will be a value of time.Duration.

When printed, a time.Duration formats itself "intelligently":

t1 := time.Now()
t2 := t1.Add(time.Second * 341)

fmt.Println(t1)
fmt.Println(t2)

diff := t2.Sub(t1)
fmt.Println(diff)

Output:

2009-11-10 23:00:00 +0000 UTC
2009-11-10 23:05:41 +0000 UTC
5m41s

If you want the time format HH:mm:ss, you may constuct a time.Time value and use its Time.Format() method like this:

out := time.Time{}.Add(diff)
fmt.Println(out.Format("15:04:05"))

Output:

00:05:41

Try the examples on the Go Playground.

Of course this will only work if the time difference is less than a day. If the difference may be bigger, then it's another story. The result must include days, months and years. Complexity increases significnatly. See this question for details:

golang time.Since() with months and years

The solution presented there solves this issue by showing a function with signature:

func diff(a, b time.Time) (year, month, day, hour, min, sec int)

You may use that even if your times are within 24 hours (in which case year, month and day will be 0).

Javascript - time difference in seconds between two dates

If you want to compare a date to today, there is no need to pass today as a variable to the function (the code will get a little bit simple).

function getTimeDiff(year, month, day) {
  var today = new Date();
  var targetDate = new Date(year, month, day);
  return Math.round( (targetDate.getTime() - today.getTime()) / 1000);
}

console.log(getTimeDiff(2019,6,6));

Because getTime outputs the value in miliseconds, I have divided by 1000 and rounded the value, so you get an integer.

The code outputs somethink like 2293103 (tested in Chrome and Firefox)

How do I find the time difference between two datetime objects in python?

>>> import datetime
>>> first_time = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> later_time = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> difference = later_time - first_time
datetime.timedelta(0, 8, 562000)
>>> seconds_in_day = 24 * 60 * 60
>>> divmod(difference.days * seconds_in_day + difference.seconds, 60)
(0, 8)      # 0 minutes, 8 seconds

Subtracting the later time from the first time difference = later_time - first_time creates a datetime object that only holds the difference.
In the example above it is 0 minutes, 8 seconds and 562000 microseconds.

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