Question

I’m trying to get the past X days counting from today back using JavaScript.

However I’m only able to work out how to get today’s date but now the previous dates.

Say If I wanted the last 6 days including today, it to be printed as such:

• Monday Nov 5
• Sunday Nov 4
• Saturday Nov 3
• Friday Nov 2
• Thursday Nov 1
• Wednesday Oct 31

Heres what I’ve got so far to get the current day.

(function() {
    var days = ['Sunday','Monday','Tuesday','Wednesday','Thursday','Friday','Saturday'],
        months = ['Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sept','Oct','Nov','Dec'];
    Date.prototype.getMonthName = function() {
        return months[this.getMonth()];
    };
    Date.prototype.getDayName = function() {
        return days[this.getDay()];
    };
})();

var todayDate = new Date(),
      day = todayDate.getDate(),
      weekday = todayDate.getDayName(),
      month = todayDate.getMonthName(),
      today = weekday + ' ' + month + ' ' + day;

Answer 1

using 86400000(miliseconds) approach will have a problem with daylight savings time

suppose

var d = new Date(“23/12/2012 00:00:00”);

var e = new Date(d.getTime() – 86400000);

and DST is +1 then e will be 23/12/2012 01:00:00

to solve this you can have a function to calculate the date before like:

Date.prototype.getPreviousDate = function(beforeDays) {
    if (!days) { beforeDays = 0 }
    return new Date(new Date().setDate(this.getDate() - beforeDays));
}

then you can use it like

var todayDate = new Date(), c = 0;

while(c > 6){

  var d = todayDate.getPreviousDate(c),
  day = d.getDate(),
  weekday = d.getDayName(),
  month = d.getMonthName(),
  today = weekday + ' ' + month + ' ' + day;
  alert(today);


}

for more details refer to this question