Difference between Date.parse() and .getTime()

Question

What's the main difference between:

dt = new Date();
ms = Date.parse(dt);

and

dt = new Date();
ms = dt.getTime();

they have the same output, but what the difference? and which one should i use?

Answer 1

Though it's an old post, I'll leave my answer for someone who visit here later than me.

dt = new Date();

// often false, occasionally true
Date.parse(dt) === dt.getTime()

This is because you will lose the information about milliseconds when you do dt.toString() which is internally called by Date.parse(dt). At least for Chrome (63.0.3239.84) and Firfox Quantum (57.0.3), they implement the toString() method of Date object like this way. You can try the following example yourself.

dt = new Date('2018.1.1 01:01:01.001')
dt.getTime() // 1514739661001
Date.parse(dt) // 1514739661000

Date.parse(dt) equals to dt.getTime() only if dt is captured at the moment that millisecond equals 0.