Humanize Duration

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>

Usage

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).

humanizeDuration(3000, { language: "es" }); // '3 segundos'
humanizeDuration(5000, { language: "ko" }); // '5 초'

fallbacks

Fallback languages if the provided language cannot be found (accepts an ISO 639-1 code from one of the supported languages). It works from left to right.

humanizeDuration(3000, { language: "bad language", fallbacks: ["en"] }); // '3 seconds'
humanizeDuration(3000, {
  language: "bad language",
  fallbacks: ["bad language", "es"],
}); // '3 segundos'

delimiter

String to display between the previous unit and the next value.

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

spacer

String to display between each value and unit.

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

largest

Number representing the maximum number of units to display for the duration.

humanizeDuration(1000000000000); // '31 years, 8 months, 1 week, 19 hours, 46 minutes, 40 seconds'
humanizeDuration(1000000000000, { largest: 2 }); // '31 years, 8 months'

units

Array of strings to define which units are used to display the duration (if needed). Can be one, or a combination of any, of the following: ['y', 'mo', 'w', 'd', 'h', 'm', 's', 'ms']

humanizeDuration(3600000, { units: ["h"] }); // '1 hour'
humanizeDuration(3600000, { units: ["m"] }); // '60 minutes'
humanizeDuration(3600000, { units: ["d", "h"] }); // '1 hour'

round

Boolean value. Use true to round the smallest unit displayed (can be combined with largest and units).

humanizeDuration(1200); // '1.2 seconds'
humanizeDuration(1200, { round: true }); // '1 second'
humanizeDuration(1600, { round: true }); // '2 seconds'

decimal

String to substitute for the decimal point in a decimal fraction.

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.

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

Number that defines a maximal decimal points for float values.

humanizeDuration(8123.456789); // 8.12 seconds
humanizeDuration(8123.456789, { maxDecimalPoints: 3 }); // 8.123 seconds
humanizeDuration(8123.456789, { maxDecimalPoints: 6 }); // 8.123456 seconds
humanizeDuration(8123.45, { maxDecimalPoints: 6 }); // 8.12345 seconds
humanizeDuration(8000, { maxDecimalPoints: 6 }); // 8 seconds

unitMeasures

Customize the value used to calculate each unit of time.

humanizeDuration(400); // '0.4 seconds'
humanizeDuration(400, {
  unitMeasures: {
    y: 365,
    mo: 30,
    w: 7,
    d: 1,
  },
}); // '1 year, 1 month, 5 days'

Combined example

humanizeDuration(3602000, {
  language: "es",
  round: true,
  spacer: " glorioso ",
  units: ["m"],
}); // '60 glorioso minutos'

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:

For a list of supported languages, you can use the getSupportedLanguages function.

humanizeDuration.getSupportedLanguages();
// ['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', da', 'de', ...]

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:

• Martin Prins for language support
• Filipi Siqueira for Portuguese support
• Peter Rekdal Sunde for Norwegian support
• Michał Janiec for Polish support
• Eileen Li for Chinese support
• Tommy Brunn for Swedish support
• Giovanni Pellerano for Italian support
• Rahma Sghaier for Arabic support
• Evgenios Kastanias for Greek support
• Oleksii Mylotskyi for Ukrainian support
• Patrik Simek for Czech support
• Toni Helminen for Finnish support
• Vidmantas Drasutis for Lithuanian support
• Manh Tuan for Vietnamese support
• Leonard Lee for Indonesian & Malay support
• Jesse Jackson for documentation help
• Óli Tómas Freysson for Icelandic support
• Saeed Ganji for Farsi/Persian support
• Caner Elci for Bulgarian support
• Matej Kolesár for Slovak support
• Abdul Jalil for Urdu support
• Wasuwat Limsuparhat for Thai support
• Malikoun for Lao support
• Villu Orav for Estonian support
• Harijs Deksnis for Latvian support
• Nirmala Thapa(Subit) for Faroese support
• Fahad Kassim for Swahili support
• Prayag Roy Choudhury for updating Mocha
• Aryan Rawlani for Hindi support
• Kristijan Jesenski for Slovenian support

Licensed under the permissive Unlicense. Enjoy!

Related modules

• pretty-ms
• angularjs-humanize-duration
• millisec
• HumanizeDuration.ts, a TypeScript version of this module
• aurelia-time