Arithmetic operation must be of type 'any', 'number', 'bigint' or an enum type

General
1

Hi Forum,

I have a function node with the following code which runs fine and does what I want. msg.date contains a timestamp.

let age = (new Date() - new Date(msg.date)) / (1000 * 60);

but since the new Node-RED update I receive the following error-messages

"new Date()" is marked with this error:
The left-hand side of an arithmetic operation must be of type 'any', 'number', 'bigint' or an enum type.(2362)

"new Date(msg.date)" is marked with this one:
The right-hand side of an arithmetic operation must be of type 'any', 'number', 'bigint' or an enum type.(2363)

Any advice is appreciated on why this code is bad. Thanks in advance!

2

The syntax checker does not understand that if you perform arithmetic on a Date object then javascript will automatically call getTime() for you to convert the dates to milliseconds. If you explicitly do the conversion then it should be happy
let age = (new Date().getTime() - new Date(msg.date).getTime()) / (1000 * 60)

3

Alternatively try

let age = (new Date().valueOf() - new Date(msg.date).valueOf()) / (1000 * 60);
4

thank you guys! Both solutions work, I think :beers:

5

or

let age = (Date.now() - new Date(msg.date).getTime()) / (1000 * 60)