Question

I am new to JavaScript but need to run a check to make sure it is daylight. I am using yahoo’s weather API to pull sunrise and sunset. I’m just a little confused as to the best approach for comparing its results to the current time.

I am confused because it returns a time like sunset: ‘9:01 pm’. bsince there is a PM it is text. I can’t think of a good way to compare it to the current time… RegExp, then convert to an integer maybe?

What would be the best approach to this, and why (sorry I’m trying to learn)?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

Create a new Date() with the info from yahoo’s api, then compare Date.now() with sunsetDate.getTime() and sunriseDate.getTime().

Passing today’s date in mm/dd/yyyy format with the time as ‘9:01 pm’ to the Date constructor will give you a valid date.

var today = new Date();
today = [today.getMonth()+1, today.getDate(), today.getFullYear()].join('/');

var yahooSunrise = '5:45 am';
var yahooSunset = '9:01 pm';

var sunrise = new Date(today + ' ' + yahooSunrise).getTime();
var sunset = new Date(today + ' ' + yahooSunset).getTime();
var now = Date.now();

var isDaylight = (now > sunrise && now < sunset);