What is the JS function in the debug windows for date conversions?

General
1

I have been fiddling with this for hours now (yes, really) ... I am new at this so I need to put in some research time before I run to the forums.

In the node-red debug pane I can output a timestamp as a numeric entry:
1587723989
When I click on that hyper-linked value I get the nice little ISO date/time:
2020-04-24T10:26:29.000Z

I am outputting this to MQTT so I want to insert a function node to do the exact same function that clicking in the debug window is doing.

var d = new Date();
// the question is what goes here to populate the d variable to perform the same conversion as the debug pane
var n = d.toISOString();

I tried the "moment" and "simpletime" nodes and never got them working properly, plus would prefer to know how to code this simple conversion in a function node.

Thanks for any guidance! I have just been coding in node-red a couple days.

2

Where do you get the timestamp from ? (meaning input)

3

try d.toLocaleString ()

good info here and here

4

The numbers come from a REST API call. Does that matter to the debug window? It just is converting the msg.payload number, right?

5

The formatting of the output will probably not be an issue, it is the population of the date/time variable using the number. What I was looking for was something like:

var d new Date();
d.populateDateFromEpochNumber(myNumber); <- this is the magic function I search for :slight_smile:

6 
var d = new Date(epoch_number)
7

Steve,
I knew I had tried that before but the string I got from the following code is not the correct date

var d = new Date(msg.payload); // payload has 1587732484
var n = d.toISOString();
msg.payload = n;
return msg; // msg.payload now has "1970-01-19T09:02:12.484Z"

for the number: 1587732484 shown in the debugger pane...
clicking on the hyperlinked number shows: (the correct value)
2020-04-24T12:48:04.000Z

I assume I am missing something simple here.

8

Javascript uses milliseconds internally, UNIX timestamps are usually in seconds

var d = new Date(1587732484 * 1000)
9

That was the whole problem, Steve. Thanks much for your insight. It is a lesson I won't ever forget!

10

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