node-red-contrib-moment

Node-Red Node that produces a nicely formatted Date/Time string using the Moment.JS library.

Based on thoughts from a conversation in the Node-Red Google Group.

Install

Run the following command in the root directory of your Node-RED install

npm install node-red-contrib-moment

While in development, install with:

npm install https://github.com/TotallyInformation/node-red-contrib-moment/tarball/master

Usage

The node expects an input from the incoming msg. By default, this is msg.payload. If it is a recognisable date/time, it will apply a format and output the resulting string or object accordingly.

There are 5 parameters to the node.

1. Topic - as expected, if provided, msg.topic will be set on the output. Otherwise, any input topic is passed through

2. Input - defines the Property on the input msg that carries the date/time. msg.payload by default. Input must be either a Javascript Date object or a date/time string that can be parsed by Modment.JS.

   It tries to work out the input format and allows more variations to be recognised. Such as 'Thursday, February 6th, 2014 9:20pm'

   It can also be null, non-existant or an empty string, in which case it will be set to the current date/time. Useful for easily injecting the current date/time from any trigger.

3. Format - defines how the output should be formatted. Can be any format string recognised by Moment.JS or one of (alternative spellings in brackets, spellings are not case sensitive):

   If left blank

   If the input is a Javascript Date object, output in ISO8601 format. If the input is a recognised date string, output a Javascript Date object

   ISO8601 (ISO)

   ISO 8602 format, e.g. "2015-01-28T16:24:48+00:00"
   This is the default if the input is a Javascript Date object

   date (jsDate)

   a Javascript Date object
   This is the default if the input is a recognised date string

   fromNow (timeAgo)

   e.g. 30 minutes ago

   calendar (aroundNow)

   e.g. "Last Monday", "Tomorrow 2:30pm"

   duration

   e.g. "8 minutes"

4. Output - defines the property on the output msg that will carry the formatted date/time string (or Javascript object).

5. Name - as usual, a unique name identifier for the node instance.

To Do

Summary of things I'd like to do with the moment node (not necessarily immediately):

• Add a combo box to the Format field with common formats pre-populated Combo boxes are fiddly in HTML.

• Improve the error messages when Moment.JS fails to interpret the input (say why)

• Allow more input date/time formats - turns out Moment.JS doesn't really help here. At present, I see too many input failures from US/UK date formats, etc. It would be great if I could parse "human" inputs like "tomorrow" and "2 minutes from now". We can output them now but not input them.

  Partly complete: Added the parseFormat plugin. That failed, see code for details.

  Maybe add a dropdown with a country code to give a hint.

License

This code is Open Source under an Apache 2 License. Please see the apache2-license.txt file for details.

You may not use this code except in compliance with the License. You may obtain an original copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. Please see the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Author

Julian Knight (Totally Information), https://github.com/totallyinformation

Feedback and Support

Please report any issues or suggestions via the Github Issues list for this repository.

For more information, feedback, or community support see the Node-Red Google groups forum at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/node-red