How to calculate date difference in JavaScript?

Question

Assuming you have two Date objects, you can just subtract them to get the difference in milliseconds:

var difference = date2 - date1;

From there, you can use simple arithmetic to derive the other values.

var DateDiff = {

    inDays: function(d1, d2) {
        var t2 = d2.getTime();
        var t1 = d1.getTime();

        return parseInt((t2-t1)/(24*3600*1000));
    },

    inWeeks: function(d1, d2) {
        var t2 = d2.getTime();
        var t1 = d1.getTime();

        return parseInt((t2-t1)/(24*3600*1000*7));
    },

    inMonths: function(d1, d2) {
        var d1Y = d1.getFullYear();
        var d2Y = d2.getFullYear();
        var d1M = d1.getMonth();
        var d2M = d2.getMonth();

        return (d2M+12*d2Y)-(d1M+12*d1Y);
    },

    inYears: function(d1, d2) {
        return d2.getFullYear()-d1.getFullYear();
    }
}

var dString = "May, 20, 1984";

var d1 = new Date(dString);
var d2 = new Date();

document.write("<br />Number of <b>days</b> since "+dString+": "+DateDiff.inDays(d1, d2));
document.write("<br />Number of <b>weeks</b> since "+dString+": "+DateDiff.inWeeks(d1, d2));
document.write("<br />Number of <b>months</b> since "+dString+": "+DateDiff.inMonths(d1, d2));
document.write("<br />Number of <b>years</b> since "+dString+": "+DateDiff.inYears(d1, d2));

Code sample taken from here.

Another solution is convert difference to a new Date object and get that date's year(diff from 1970), month, day etc.

var date1 = new Date(2010, 6, 17);
var date2 = new Date(2013, 12, 18);
var diff = new Date(date2.getTime() - date1.getTime());
// diff is: Thu Jul 05 1973 04:00:00 GMT+0300 (EEST)

console.log(diff.getUTCFullYear() - 1970); // Gives difference as year
// 3

console.log(diff.getUTCMonth()); // Gives month count of difference
// 6

console.log(diff.getUTCDate() - 1); // Gives day count of difference
// 4

So difference is like "3 years and 6 months and 4 days". If you want to take difference in a human readable style, that can help you.

Expressions like "difference in days" are never as simple as they seem. If you have the following dates:

d1: 2011-10-15 23:59:00
d1: 2011-10-16 00:01:00

the difference in time is 2 minutes, should the "difference in days" be 1 or 0? Similar issues arise for any expression of the difference in months, years or whatever since years, months and days are of different lengths and different times (e.g. the day that daylight saving starts is 1 hour shorter than usual and two hours shorter than the day that it ends).

Here is a function for a difference in days that ignores the time, i.e. for the above dates it returns 1.

/*
   Get the number of days between two dates - not inclusive.

   "between" does not include the start date, so days
   between Thursday and Friday is one, Thursday to Saturday
   is two, and so on. Between Friday and the following Friday is 7.

   e.g. getDaysBetweenDates( 22-Jul-2011, 29-jul-2011) => 7.

   If want inclusive dates (e.g. leave from 1/1/2011 to 30/1/2011),
   use date prior to start date (i.e. 31/12/2010 to 30/1/2011).

   Only calculates whole days.

   Assumes d0 <= d1
*/
function getDaysBetweenDates(d0, d1) {

  var msPerDay = 8.64e7;

  // Copy dates so don't mess them up
  var x0 = new Date(d0);
  var x1 = new Date(d1);

  // Set to noon - avoid DST errors
  x0.setHours(12,0,0);
  x1.setHours(12,0,0);

  // Round to remove daylight saving errors
  return Math.round( (x1 - x0) / msPerDay );
}

This can be more concise:

/*  Return number of days between d0 and d1.
**  Returns positive if d0 < d1, otherwise negative.
**
**  e.g. between 2000-02-28 and 2001-02-28 there are 366 days
**       between 2015-12-28 and 2015-12-29 there is 1 day
**       between 2015-12-28 23:59:59 and 2015-12-29 00:00:01 there is 1 day
**       between 2015-12-28 00:00:01 and 2015-12-28 23:59:59 there are 0 days
**        
**  @param {Date} d0  - start date
**  @param {Date} d1  - end date
**  @returns {number} - whole number of days between d0 and d1
**
*/
function daysDifference(d0, d1) {
  var diff = new Date(+d1).setHours(12) - new Date(+d0).setHours(12);
  return Math.round(diff/8.64e7);
}

// Simple formatter
function formatDate(date){
  return [date.getFullYear(),('0'+(date.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2),('0'+date.getDate()).slice(-2)].join('-');
}

// Examples
[[new Date(2000,1,28), new Date(2001,1,28)],  // Leap year
 [new Date(2001,1,28), new Date(2002,1,28)],  // Not leap year
 [new Date(2017,0,1),  new Date(2017,1,1)] 
].forEach(function(dates) {
  document.write('From ' + formatDate(dates[0]) + ' to ' + formatDate(dates[1]) +
                 ' is ' + daysDifference(dates[0],dates[1]) + ' days<br>');
});

<html lang="en">
<head>
<script>
function getDateDiff(time1, time2) {
  var str1= time1.split('/');
  var str2= time2.split('/');

  //                yyyy   , mm       , dd
  var t1 = new Date(str1[2], str1[0]-1, str1[1]);
  var t2 = new Date(str2[2], str2[0]-1, str2[1]);

  var diffMS = t1 - t2;    
  console.log(diffMS + ' ms');

  var diffS = diffMS / 1000;    
  console.log(diffS + ' ');

  var diffM = diffS / 60;
  console.log(diffM + ' minutes');

  var diffH = diffM / 60;
  console.log(diffH + ' hours');

  var diffD = diffH / 24;
  console.log(diffD + ' days');
  alert(diffD);
}

//alert(getDateDiff('10/18/2013','10/14/2013'));
</script>
</head>
<body>
  <input type="button" 
       onclick="getDateDiff('10/18/2013','10/14/2013')" 
       value="clickHere()" />

</body>
</html>

use Moment.js for all your JavaScript related date-time calculation

Answer to your question is:

var a = moment([2007, 0, 29]);   
var b = moment([2007, 0, 28]);    
a.diff(b) // 86400000  

Complete details can be found here

With momentjs it's simple:

moment("2016-04-08").fromNow();