Duration strings

parseDuration turns a human-written duration into milliseconds. It's useful for durations that come from config files, environment variables or user input.

parseDuration('2m 1s');
// => 121_000

parseDuration('1h 30m');
// => 5_400_000

parseDuration('1.5h');
// => 5_400_000

parseDuration('1d 2h 3m 4s 5ms 6μs 7ns');
// => 93_784_005.006_007

Format

A duration string is one or more amounts, each followed by a unit. Amounts can be decimals, and can be separated by spaces or written together ('1h30m'). Repeated units are added up.

Unit	Meaning
w	Weeks
d	Days
h	Hours
m	Minutes
s	Seconds
ms	Milliseconds
μs	Microseconds
ns	Nanoseconds

Units are case-sensitive, and there's no space between an amount and its unit. The units are also available as the TimeUnit type.

Invalid strings

By default, a string that isn't a valid duration returns 0:

parseDuration('soon');
// => 0

Pass true as the second argument to throw instead, so mistakes don't go unnoticed:

parseDuration('soon', true);
// => throws Error: "soon" is not a valid duration