# Node-red-dashboard Chart rewrite epoch time X axis labels
**URL:** https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174
**Category:** Dashboard
**Created:** [29 June 2020 14:51 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174 "2020-06-29T14:51:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@johnwalicki](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/johnwalicki)
#### Post date: [29 June 2020 14:51 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/1 "2020-06-29T14:51:53Z")
Dave CJ - There are several Weather Company APIs that return historical data that I would like to plot in charts. I build the chart data series with Epoch time as the X axis. It looks fine but the X axis labels are somewhat meaningless. I was wondering if there is a way to set the labels to a date format. Something like 06-23-2020 06-24-2020 06-25-2020
-- John
Two examples:
 
---
### Author:  [@Colin](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/Colin)
#### Post date: [29 June 2020 15:07 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/2 "2020-06-29T15:07:56Z")
The timestamps should be in javascript milliseconds.
I looks like they are wrong. Show us some of the data that you are sending to the chart and tell us what the timestamps represent.
---
### Author:  [@johnwalicki](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/johnwalicki)
#### Post date: [29 June 2020 15:18 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/3 "2020-06-29T15:18:56Z")
The timestamps are in seconds 1593342000 (one timestamp per day)
The chart is correct but the x-axis autoselects meaningless tick marks.
Here's a function that builds a chart of 30 days of temperature data (the data is looking backwards in time so I reverse it for the chart)
```auto
var MonthlyHistoryTempChart = [{
"series":["Daily Temp Max", "Daily Temp Min"],
"data":[[],[]],
"labels":["Daily Max Temp", "Daily Min Temp"]
}];
for( var i=(msg.payload.validTimeUtc.length)-1; i >= 0 ; i--) {
MonthlyHistoryTempChart[0].data[0].push( {"x":msg.payload.validTimeUtc[i],"y":msg.payload.temperatureMax[i] } ) ;
MonthlyHistoryTempChart[0].data[1].push( {"x":msg.payload.validTimeUtc[i],"y":msg.payload.temperatureMin[i] } ) ;
}
msg.payload = MonthlyHistoryTempChart;
return msg;
```
---
### Author:  [@johnwalicki](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/johnwalicki)
#### Post date: [29 June 2020 15:53 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/4 "2020-06-29T15:53:07Z")
Essentially, I want to set the underlying chart.js options to label the x-axis as days.
From the chart.js docs I see:
[https://www.chartjs.org/docs/latest/axes/cartesian/time.html#time-units](https://www.chartjs.org/docs/latest/axes/cartesian/time.html#time-units)
which tells me to set the options object. How can I pass this through the node-red-dashboard chart node to the underlying chart.js?
```auto
var chart = new Chart(ctx, {
type: 'line',
data: data,
options: {
scales: {
xAxes: [{
type: 'time',
time: {
unit: 'day'
}
}]
}
}
});
```
---
### Author:  [@johnwalicki](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/johnwalicki)
#### Post date: [29 June 2020 16:11 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/5 "2020-06-29T16:11:07Z")
Searching through this forum, I see some chart.js examples which use the ui\_template node. I was hopeful that I wouldn't need to go down that path for a common time series use case.
---
### Author:  [@johnwalicki](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/johnwalicki)
#### Post date: [29 June 2020 16:21 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/6 "2020-06-29T16:21:25Z")
gah - I'm going to crawl under my rock again. Dave is brilliant and has already provided this capability. Not certain when it became an option in the Chart node.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [29 July 2020 16:21 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/node-red-dashboard-chart-rewrite-epoch-time-x-axis-labels/29174/7 "2020-07-29T16:21:26Z")
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