dateToArray - handy for emitting Cloudant & Apache CouchDB MapReduce keys based on dates

dateToArray.js

// MIT Licensed - http://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/
function dateToArray(ts, length, utc) {                                          
  var length = length || 6,                                                      
      d = (typeof ts === 'number' ? new Date(ts) : new Date()),                  
      utc = Boolean(utc) || true;                                                
  if (utc) {                                                                     
    return [d.getUTCFullYear(), d.getUTCMonth(), d.getUTCDate(),                 
      d.getUTCHours(), d.getUTCMinutes(), d.getUTCSeconds(),                     
      d.getUTCMilliseconds()]                                                    
        .slice(0, length);                                                       
  } else {                                                                       
    return [d.getFullYear(), d.getMonth(), d.getDate(), d.getHours(),            
      d.getMinutes(), d.getSeconds(), d.getMilliseconds()]                       
        .slice(0, length);                                                       
  }                                                                              
}

Hi, Benjamin. Since Couch apps can be both run by and accessed by computers all around the world, I would think UTC should be the default, not the option. Maybe call it local and switch the if and else parts?

That's actually how I had it--as my typo on line 4 might prove. :) UTC is the default in any case. I'll fix the gist, and we can discuss internal variable naming following that. :)

ES5 has planned support for ISO8601, and it can be shimmed:
http://frugalcoder.us/post/2010/01/07/EcmaScript-5s-Date-Extensions.aspx

In my own code, I converted it to string with JSON.stringify() and then split it up with a regex. But I think old versions of "couch" (actually Spidermonkey) don't provide the correct stringification. Also you get a string of a quoted string, so you have to chomp those out, so it's a wash at best I guess.

I typically use this now: http://momentjs.com/docs/#/displaying/as-array/

More to include...but then you've got all the moment-us power available. 😸