Manual:Date/Time Functions

Date & Time Functions

A collection of functions for handling date & time.

datetime:parse

datetime:parse(source, format, as_epoch)

Parses the specified source string, according to the format if given, to return a representation of the date/time. If as_epoch is provided and true, the return value will be a Unix epoch — the number of seconds since 1970. This is a useful format for exchanging date/times with other systems. If as_epoch is false, then a Lua time table will be returned. Details of the time tables are provided in the Lua Manual.

Supported Format Codes

%b = Abbreviated Month Name
%B = Full Month Name
%d = Day of Month
%H = Hour (24-hour format)
%I = Hour (12-hour format, requires %p as well)
%p = AM or PM
%m = 2-digit month (01-12)
%M = 2-digit minutes (00-59)
%S = 2-digit seconds (00-59)
%y = 2-digit year (00-99), will automatically prepend 20 so 10 becomes 2010 and not 1910.
%Y = 4-digit year.

getEpoch

seconds = getEpoch()

This function returns the seconds since Unix epoch with milliseconds.

Example

getEpoch() -- will show e.g. 1523555867.191

getTime

time = getTime([return as string, [custom time format]])

"return string" is a boolean value (in Lua anything but false or nil will translate to true). If false, the function will return a table in the following format:

{ 'min': #, 'year': #, 'month': #, 'day': #, 'sec': #, 'hour': #, 'msec': # }

If true, it will return the date and time as a string using a format passed to the "custom time format" arg or if none is supplied the default of "yyyy.MM.dd hh:mm:ss.zzz":

2012.02.18 00:52:52.489

Format expressions:

h               the hour without a leading zero (0 to 23 or 1 to 12 if AM/PM display)
hh              the hour with a leading zero (00 to 23 or 01 to 12 if AM/PM display)
H               the hour without a leading zero (0 to 23, even with AM/PM display)
HH              the hour with a leading zero (00 to 23, even with AM/PM display)
m               the minute without a leading zero (0 to 59)
mm              the minute with a leading zero (00 to 59)
s               the second without a leading zero (0 to 59)
ss              the second with a leading zero (00 to 59)
z               the milliseconds without leading zeroes (0 to 999)
zzz             the milliseconds with leading zeroes (000 to 999)
AP or A         use AM/PM display. AP will be replaced by either "AM" or "PM".
ap or a         use am/pm display. ap will be replaced by either "am" or "pm".

d               the day as number without a leading zero (1 to 31)
dd              the day as number with a leading zero (01 to 31)
ddd             the abbreviated localized day name (e.g. 'Mon' to 'Sun'). Uses QDate::shortDayName().
dddd            the long localized day name (e.g. 'Monday' to 'Qt::Sunday'). Uses QDate::longDayName().
M               the month as number without a leading zero (1-12)
MM              the month as number with a leading zero (01-12)
MMM             the abbreviated localized month name (e.g. 'Jan' to 'Dec'). Uses QDate::shortMonthName().
MMMM            the long localized month name (e.g. 'January' to 'December'). Uses QDate::longMonthName().
yy              the year as two digit number (00-99)
yyyy            the year as four digit number

All other input characters will be ignored. Any sequence of characters that are enclosed in single quotes will be treated as text and not be used as an expression. Two consecutive single quotes ('') are replaced by a single single quote in the output.

Example

-- Get time as a table
getTime()

-- Get time with default string
getTime(true)

-- Get time without date and milliseconds
getTime(true, "hh:mm:ss")

getTimestamp

time = getTimestamp([console_name], lineNumber)

Returns the timestamp string as it’s seen when you enable the timestamps view (blue i button bottom right).

Example

-- echo the timestamp of the current line in a trigger:
echo(getTimestamp(getLineCount()))

-- insert the timestamp into a "chat" miniconsole
cecho("chat", "<red>"..getTimestamp(getLineCount()))

shms

shms(seconds, bool)

Converts seconds into hours, minutes and seconds, displaying the result as a table. An optional second argument can be passed to return the result as an echo.

Available in Mudlet3.0+

Example

--Determine the total number of seconds and display:
shms(65535, true)