Epoch in ActionScript

A common requirement in programs is getting the number of seconds, milliseconds, or nanoseconds since the Unix epoch. Here’s how to do it in ActionScript.

package {
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.utils.getTimer;

    public class Epoch extends Sprite {
        public function Epoch() {
            // Use getTimer() to get milliseconds since Flash was initialized
            var now:Number = new Date().time;
            trace(new Date(now));

            // Get seconds since Unix epoch
            trace(Math.floor(now / 1000));

            // Get milliseconds since Unix epoch
            trace(now);

            // Get microseconds since Unix epoch (ActionScript doesn't support nanoseconds)
            trace(now * 1000);

            // Convert seconds since epoch to Date
            trace(new Date(Math.floor(now / 1000) * 1000));

            // Convert milliseconds since epoch to Date
            trace(new Date(now));
        }
    }
}

Use new Date().time to get the current time in milliseconds since the Unix epoch. ActionScript doesn’t have built-in methods for Unix time in seconds or nanoseconds, so we need to perform some calculations.

To run this ActionScript code, you would typically compile it into a SWF file and run it in a Flash Player or AIR runtime environment. The output would look something like this:

Wed Oct 31 16:13:58 GMT-0000 2012
1351700038
1351700038292
1351700038292000
Wed Oct 31 16:13:58 GMT-0000 2012
Wed Oct 31 16:13:58 GMT-0000 2012

Note that ActionScript’s Date class doesn’t provide nanosecond precision, so we’ve used microseconds (multiplying milliseconds by 1000) as the closest alternative.

Next, we’ll look at another time-related task: time parsing and formatting.

Time in ActionScript

Time Formatting Parsing in ActionScript

Learn X By Example

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Epoch in ActionScript