JPKCom DB

Time Converter — Manual

Full reference for the Time Converter: the Current, Convert, and Timeago tabs, eleven output formats, language and time-zone selection, server-clock endpoints.

Back to overview: Time Converter · Open the live tool: www.jpkc.com/tools/time/

This manual describes the Time Converter in full: how the three tabs are laid out, which formats the output contains, what each button does, and where the limits of the time-zone picker lie. The tool's interface is in English, so the labels appear here in their original spelling.

Interface layout

The Time Converter is a single card with three tabs at the top and two global settings in the card footer:

  • Current — the live clock.
  • Convert — the bidirectional conversion between date/time and Unix timestamp.
  • Timeago — the time-difference calculator.
  • In the card footer: Language Format (output language) and Timezone (display time zone). Both apply to all three tabs.

Every tab has a dark output field (pre) you can edit directly if needed, and a copy button with a clipboard icon that puts the content on the clipboard.

Data basis: Day.js and seconds

All the time logic runs client-side through the Day.js library (with the UTC, Timezone, LocalizedFormat, RelativeTime, and CustomParseFormat plugins). Two things matter for understanding every input and output:

  • Unix timestamps mean seconds, not milliseconds. A JavaScript millisecond time (13 digits) must be divided by 1000 before you enter it here.
  • Date and time are internally assembled and parsed in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss.

The eleven output formats

Both the Current and the Convert tab emit the same block of eleven lines — the same instant, in eleven spellings. The localized formats (lines 4–11) follow the chosen language, the clock time follows the chosen time zone:

  1. Unix timestamp (seconds), e.g. 1700000000
  2. YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss Z with offset, e.g. 2023-11-14 23:13:20 +01:00
  3. ISO 8601 (Day.js default), e.g. 2023-11-14T23:13:20+01:00
  4. L — localized date, e.g. 11/14/2023 (en) or 14.11.2023 (de)
  5. l — the same in short form
  6. LL — long date, e.g. November 14, 2023
  7. ll — long date, short, e.g. Nov 14, 2023
  8. LLL — date and time, e.g. November 14, 2023 11:13 PM
  9. lll — the same in short form
  10. LLLL — with weekday, e.g. Tuesday, November 14, 2023 11:13 PM
  11. llll — with weekday, short, e.g. Tue, Nov 14, 2023 11:13 PM

The "Current" tab

Live clock and formats

The Current tab shows the current time and refreshes it every second (internally every 1000 ms). The eleven lines above update continuously — you see the ticking Unix timestamp, the ISO form, and all localized spellings at once, each in the configured time zone and language.

Start/Stop Timer

The red Start/Stop Timer button pauses and resumes the live update. While the clock is paused, the display freezes at the last shown moment — handy when you want to copy a value without it ticking away under your cursor. Click again and the clock continues. When the page loads, the timer is already running.

Copying

The button next to the output field puts the entire block on the clipboard.

The "Convert" tab

This tab converts in both directions and fills the same eleven-line output field (Click "Convert" to convert a date/time… as its initial state).

Date/time → Unix timestamp

At the top you set a date and time via dropdowns: Year (1970 to 3000), Month, Day, Hour (0–23), Minute, and Second. They're prefilled with the current time. Clicking Convert (next to the fields) converts that moment into all eleven formats — including the matching Unix timestamp in line 1.

Unix timestamp → date/time

Below that, you enter a seconds value into the Unix Timestamp field (prefilled with the current timestamp). The Convert button beside it triggers the conversion: the timestamp is turned into the same eleven formats, i.e. the readable date and time spellings in the chosen time zone and language.

Get Server Time

The Get Server Time button fetches the server clock's current Unix timestamp and fills it into the Unix Timestamp field. Behind it sits a small endpoint (/tools/time/time/) that does nothing but return the server time as plain text. This is useful when the local machine clock isn't reliably set and you need an independent reference value. You then click Convert to turn that server timestamp into readable formats.

Server endpoints

The Time Converter exposes two lean, publicly retrievable text endpoints, each responding with no-cache headers:

  • /tools/time/time/ — returns the current Unix timestamp in seconds (PHP's time()). This is the endpoint the Get Server Time button uses.
  • /tools/time/mtime/ — returns the current microtime (PHP's microtime(), i.e. seconds with a fractional part). This endpoint isn't used by the interface but is available for your own scripts.

The "Timeago" tab

This tab calculates time differences. There are two input blocks and two buttons.

Start Date & Time and End Date & Time

You fill in two points in time: Start Date & Time and End Date & Time, each with fields for year, month, day, hour, minute, and second (the year is a free number field, prefilled with the current year).

Calculate from Now

The Calculate from Now button compares the Start date with the current moment (now). The output lists the difference broken out by unit — Years, Months, Day, Hours, Minutes, Seconds — where each line gives the full distance in that single unit (i.e. "that many days in total", not "days in addition to the months"). Below that come two readable summaries:

  • a relative phrasing (fromNow), e.g. "in 3 days" or "2 years ago", in the chosen language;
  • a precise breakdown that decomposes the gap into a single chain of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds (e.g. 1 year 2 months 5 days …).

Calculate Start/End Range

The Calculate Start/End Range button compares the Start with the End moment. The output is broken out by unit as above (each line a total distance in that unit) and ends with the precise breakdown. There's no relative fromNow line here, because there's no reference to now.

The global settings

Language Format

The Language Format dropdown in the card footer determines which language the localized formats (L/LL/LLL/LLLL and their short forms, plus the fromNow line) render in. Over 60 language formats are on offer, from German and English (with regional variants like en-GB, en-AU, fr-CA) through French, Spanish, Italian, Russian to Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. The default is English. The language changes only the formatting — the instant itself stays the same.

Timezone

The Timezone dropdown determines which time zone the date and time values are displayed in. The list is curated, not the full IANA catalog:

  • Generic — generic zone abbreviations: CET (default), CST6CDT, EET, EST, EST5EDT, HST, MET, MST, MST7MDT, PST8PDT, WET.
  • Etc — fixed offsets Etc/GMT (= GMT) plus Etc/GMT+1 through Etc/GMT+12 and Etc/GMT-1 through Etc/GMT-14, as well as Etc/UCT.

Important: the Etc/GMT zones follow the POSIX sign convention and are therefore sign-inverted relative to the usual UTC notation — Etc/GMT+1 is actually UTC**−1, and Etc/GMT-1 is UTC+**1. More on that in the tips & tricks.

Operating limits and privacy

  • Client-side: conversion, comparison, and formatting run entirely in the browser via Day.js. The values you enter never leave it.
  • Single server interaction: Get Server Time calls /tools/time/time/ and receives only a number; no user data is transmitted.
  • Seconds, not milliseconds: Unix timestamps are interpreted as seconds throughout.
  • Time-zone choice is fixed: no city zones (like Europe/Berlin), no automatic browser zone — only the curated list above.
  • Year range: the date dropdown covers the years 1970 to 3000.

For the introduction and target audiences see the overview page. Concrete walkthroughs are in the examples, strategy and pitfalls in the tips & tricks. You can try everything directly in the tool.