humanize-duration

Convert millisecond durations to English and many other languages.

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Humanize Duration
npm version
I have the time in milliseconds and I want it to become "30 minutes" or "3 days, 1 hour". Enter Humanize Duration!
This library is actively maintained but no new features will be added.

Installation

This package is available as humanize-duration on npm and Bower. You can also include the JavaScript file in the browser.
npm install humanize-duration

Basic usage

With require (like in Node or with common build systems):
const humanizeDuration = require("humanize-duration");
humanizeDuration(12000);
// => "12 seconds"

With a <script> tag:
<script src="humanize-duration.js"></script>
<script>
  humanizeDuration(12000);
</script>

By default, Humanize Duration will humanize down to the second, and will return a decimal for the smallest unit. It will humanize in English by default.
humanizeDuration(3000);
// => "3 seconds"

humanizeDuration(2250);
// => "2.25 seconds"

humanizeDuration(97320000);
// => "1 day, 3 hours, 2 minutes"

Options

You can change the settings by passing options as the second argument.

language

Language for unit display. Accepts an ISO 639-1 code from one of the supported languages.
Default: "en".
humanizeDuration(3000, { language: "es" });
// => "3 segundos"

humanizeDuration(5000, { language: "ko" });
// => "5 초"

fallbacks

Array of fallback languages, if the provided language cannot be found. Like language, accepts an ISO 639-1 code from one of the supported languages. It works from left to right, choosing the first language that's found.
Default: [].
humanizeDuration(3000, {
  language: "bad language",
  fallbacks: ["en"],
});
// => "3 seconds"

humanizeDuration(3000, {
  language: "bad language",
  fallbacks: ["another bad language", "es"],
});
// => "3 segundos"

units

Array of possible units to use. Units are y, mo, w, d, h, m, s, and ms.
Units are skipped if their count is zero. For example, if you pass a duration of 1000 and units ["h", "m", "s"], the output will be "1 second".
Must be in descending order of unit size. For example, ["h", "m"] is valid but ["m", "h"] is not.
Default: ["y", "mo", "w", "d", "h", "m", "s"]
humanizeDuration(69000, { units: ["h", "m", "s", "ms"] });
// => "1 minute, 9 seconds"

humanizeDuration(3600000, { units: ["h"] });
// => "1 hour"

humanizeDuration(3600000, { units: ["m"] });
// => "60 minutes"

humanizeDuration(3600000, { units: ["d", "h"] });
// => "1 hour"

largest

Integer representing the maximum number of units to use.
Default: Infinity
humanizeDuration(1000000000000);
// => "31 years, 8 months, 1 week, 19 hours, 46 minutes, 40 seconds"

humanizeDuration(1000000000000, { largest: 2 });
// => "31 years, 8 months"

round

A boolean that, if true, rounds the smallest unit.
Default: false
humanizeDuration(1200);
// => "1.2 seconds"

humanizeDuration(1200, { round: true });
// => "1 second"

humanizeDuration(1600, { round: true });
// => "2 seconds"

delimiter

String to display between units.
Default: ", " in most languages, " ﻭ " for Arabic
humanizeDuration(22140000);
// => "6 hours, 9 minutes"

humanizeDuration(22140000, { delimiter: " and " });
// => "6 hours and 9 minutes"

spacer

String to display between the count and the word.
Default: " "
humanizeDuration(260040000);
// => "3 days, 14 minutes"

humanizeDuration(260040000, { spacer: " whole " });
// => "3 whole days, 14 whole minutes"

decimal

String to display between the integer and decimal parts of a count, if relevant.
Default depends on the language.
humanizeDuration(1200);
// => "1.2 seconds"

humanizeDuration(1200, { decimal: " point " });
// => "1 point 2 seconds"

conjunction

String to include before the final unit.
You can also set serialComma to false to eliminate the final comma.
Default: ""
humanizeDuration(22140000, { conjunction: " and " });
// => "6 hours and 9 minutes"

humanizeDuration(22141000, { conjunction: " and " });
// => "6 hours, 9 minutes, and 1 second"

humanizeDuration(22140000, { conjunction: " and ", serialComma: false });
// => "6 hours and 9 minutes"

humanizeDuration(22141000, { conjunction: " and ", serialComma: false });
// => "6 hours, 9 minutes and 1 second"

maxDecimalPoints

Integer that defines the maximum number of decimal points to show, if relevant. If undefined, the count will be converted to a string using Number.prototype.toString().
This does not round any numbers. See the round option.
Default: undefined
humanizeDuration(8123.456789);
// => "8.123456789 seconds"

humanizeDuration(8123.456789, { maxDecimalPoints: 3 });
// => "8.123 seconds"

humanizeDuration(8100, { maxDecimalPoints: 99 });
// => "8.1 seconds"

humanizeDuration(8000, { maxDecimalPoints: 99 });
// => "8 seconds"

humanizeDuration(7999, { maxDecimalPoints: 2 });
// => "7.99 seconds"

digitReplacements

Array of ten strings to which will replace the numerals 0-9. Useful if a language uses different numerals.
Default: undefined for most languages, ["۰", "١", "٢", "٣", "٤", "٥", "٦", "٧", "٨", "٩"] for Arabic
humanizeDuration(1234);
// => "1.234 seconds"

humanizeDuration(1234, {
  digitReplacements: [
    "Zero",
    "One",
    "Two",
    "Three",
    "Four",
    "Five",
    "Six",
    "Seven",
    "Eight",
    "Nine",
  ],
});
// => "One.TwoThreeFour seconds"

unitMeasures

Use this option with care. It is an advanced feature.
Object used to customize the value used to calculate each unit of time. Most useful when you want to update the length of years or months, which have ambiguous lengths.
Default: { y: 31557600000, mo: 2629800000, w: 604800000, d: 86400000, h: 3600000, m: 60000, s: 1000, ms: 1 }
humanizeDuration(2629800000);
// => "1 month"

humanizeDuration(2629800000, {
  unitMeasures: {
    y: 31557600000,
    mo: 30 * 86400000,
    w: 604800000,
    d: 86400000,
    h: 3600000,
    m: 60000,
    s: 1000,
    ms: 1,
  },
});
// => "1 month, 10 hours, 30 minutes"

Humanizers

If you find yourself setting same options over and over again, you can create a humanizer that changes the defaults, which you can still override later.
const spanishHumanizer = humanizeDuration.humanizer({
  language: "es",
  units: ["y", "mo", "d"],
});

spanishHumanizer(71177400000);
// => "2 años, 3 meses, 2 días"

spanishHumanizer(71177400000, { units: ["d", "h"] });
// => "823 días, 19.5 horas"

You can also add new languages to humanizers. For example:
const shortEnglishHumanizer = humanizeDuration.humanizer({
  language: "shortEn",
  languages: {
    shortEn: {
      y: () => "y",
      mo: () => "mo",
      w: () => "w",
      d: () => "d",
      h: () => "h",
      m: () => "m",
      s: () => "s",
      ms: () => "ms",
    },
  },
});

shortEnglishHumanizer(15600000);
// => "4 h, 20 m"

You can also add languages after initializing:
const humanizer = humanizeDuration.humanizer();

humanizer.languages.shortEn = {
  y: () => "y",
  // ...

Internally, the main humanizeDuration function is just a wrapper around a humanizer.

Supported languages

Humanize Duration supports the following languages:
| Language | Code | | -------------------- | -------- | | Afrikaans | af | | Albanian | sq | | Amharic | am | | Arabic | ar | | Basque | eu | | Bengali | bn | | Bulgarian | bg | | Catalan | ca | | Central Kurdish | ckb | | Chinese, simplified | zh_CN | | Chinese, traditional | zh_TW | | Croatian | hr | | Czech | cs | | Danish | da | | Dutch | nl | | English | en | | Esperanto | eo | | Estonian | et | | Faroese | fo | | Farsi/Persian | fa | | Finnish | fi | | French | fr | | German | de | | Greek | el | | Hebrew | he | | Hindi | hi | | Hungarian | hu | | Icelandic | is | | Indonesian | id | | Italian | it | | Japanese | ja | | Kannada | kn | | Khmer | km | | Korean | ko | | Kurdish | ku | | Lao | lo | | Latvian | lv | | Lithuanian | lt | | Macedonian | mk | | Mongolian | mn | | Malay | ms | | Marathi | mr | | Norwegian | no | | Polish | pl | | Portuguese | pt | | Romanian | ro | | Russian | ru | | Serbian | sr | | Slovak | sk | | Slovenian | sl | | Spanish | es | | Swahili | sw | | Swedish | sv | | Tamil | ta | | Telugu | te | | Thai | th | | Turkish | tr | | Ukrainian | uk | | Urdu | ur | | Uzbek | uz | | Uzbek (Cyrillic) | uz_CYR | | Vietnamese | vi | | Welsh | cy |
For a list of supported languages, you can use the getSupportedLanguages function. The results may not be in the same order every time.
humanizeDuration.getSupportedLanguages();
// => ["af", "ar", "bg", "bn", "ca", ...]

This function won't return any new languages you define; it will only return the defaults supported by the library.

Credits

Lovingly made by Evan Hahn with help from:

Licensed under the permissive Unlicense. Enjoy!

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