javascriptdatetimeutcecmascript-temporal

How to create instance of `Temporal.Instant` at specific date and time?


I’m struggling with JavaScript’s proposed new Temporal API. What I am trying to do should be straight-forward, yet I fail to find a convincing solution. I must be missing something.

The task is as follows: instantiate an object representation of an UTC datetime from variables for year, month, day, hour and minute.

My thinking is as follows:

This is silly! The use case here is super basic, and yet it’s not obvious (to me) at all how to address it.

I was expecting to be able to simply do something like: Temporal.Instant.from({ year, month, day, hour, minute });

Now the best I can come up with is: Temporal.Instant.from(year + '-' + String(month).padStart(2, '0') + '-' + String(day).padStart(2, '0') + 'T' + String(hour).padStart(2, '0') + ':' + String(minute).padStart(2, '0') + 'Z'); // 😱

Please tell me I’m bigtime overlooking something.


Solution

  • Your PlainDateTime represents "a calendar date and wall-clock time that does not carry time zone information". To convert it to an exact time, you need to supply a timezone, using the toZonedDateTime method. By then ignoring calendar and timezone via the toInstant method, you can get the desired Instant instance.

    So there's a few ways to achieve this:

    Try them for yourselves with your particular example:

    const year = 2022;
    const month = 10;
    const day = 23;
    const hour = 2;
    const minute = 50;
    
    log(Temporal.PlainDateTime.from({year, month, day, hour, minute}).toZonedDateTime("UTC").toInstant());
    log(new Temporal.PlainDateTime(year, month, day, hour, minute).toZonedDateTime("UTC").toInstant());
    log(Temporal.ZonedDateTime.from({timeZone: 'UTC', year, month, day, hour, minute}).toInstant());
    log(Temporal.TimeZone.from("UTC").getInstantFor(Temporal.PlainDateTime.from({year, month, day, hour, minute})));
    log(new Temporal.TimeZone("UTC").getInstantFor(new Temporal.PlainDateTime(year, month, day, hour, minute)));
    log(Temporal.Instant.from("2022-10-23T02:50Z"));
    log(Temporal.Instant.fromEpochMilliseconds(Date.UTC(year, month-1, day, hour, minute)));
    <script src="https://tc39.es/proposal-temporal/docs/playground.js"></script>
    <script>function log(instant) { console.log(instant.epochSeconds); }</script>