Question

I’m working on a project where the user needs to provide time estimates on specific tasks. Im wondering if there’s a script already out there ( like date.js ) that can take user input and parse it to number of seconds.

Examples: 
"2 days" = 172800
"2 hours" = 7200
"1d 5h" = 104400
"15 minutes" = 900

date.js is great for finding the specific date in the future, but I need the total number of seconds, not a specific end date.

I will code this myself if it doesn’t already exist, just want to save some time if it’s out there.

Answer 1

Here’s a library off the top of my head (sorry I couldn’t resist)

var stringToSeconds = (function() {
  //Closure to define things that
  //do not change per function call

  var reg = /(\d+)\s*(\w+)/g;
  var units = {};

  //Lets be verbose
  units.seconds = 1;
  units.minutes = units.seconds * 60;
  units.hours = units.minutes * 60;
  units.days = units.hours * 24;
  units.weeks = units.days * 7;
  units.months = units.weeks * 4;
  units.years = units.months * 12;

  //Match unit shorthand
  var getUnit = function(unit) {
    unit = unit.toLowerCase();
    for (var name in units) {
      if (!units.hasOwnProperty(name)) continue;

      if (unit == name.substr(0, unit.length)) return units[name];
    }
    return 0;
  };


  return function(str) {
    var match, totalSeconds = 0;

    while (match = reg.exec(str)) {
      var num = match[1], unit = match[2];

      totalSeconds += getUnit(unit) * num;
    }

    return totalSeconds;
  }
}());

Try it out: http://jsbin.com/ozeda/2/edit