Timestamp Microservice

Simple Express.js microservice that converts dates to Unix time (milliseconds) and UTC string. Built as part of the freeCodeCamp Back End Development and APIs curriculum.

📚 Course link

📅 This part is a good challenge for learning about date/time in JavaScript

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Overview

• Accepts either an ISO-8601 date string (e.g., 2015-12-25) or a Unix timestamp in milliseconds (e.g., 1451001600000).
• Returns a JSON response with both unix and utc representations, or an error payload when the input is invalid.
• If no date is provided, returns the current timestamp.

Features

• Input validation with clear error shape: { "error": "Invalid Date" }
• Supports ISO date strings and numeric Unix milliseconds
• Single endpoint with optional parameter for simplicity

Requirements

• Node.js >= 22 (tested with Node 22)
• express
• dotenv ( loads environment variables )
• cors

Quick Start

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/HGiang01/timestamp-microservice.git
cd timestamp-microservice

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start the server
npm start

# The app listens on PORT (default 3000)
# Visit http://localhost:3000

Configuration

• PORT: Port the HTTP server listens on (default: 3000).
• See sample.env for an example value. Note: environment variables must be provided by your shell or process manager; no .env loader is bundled.

API Usage

Base URL (local): http://localhost:3000

• GET /api

  • Returns the current time in both Unix milliseconds and UTC.

• GET /api/:date

  • :date can be either an ISO-8601 date string (e.g., 2015-12-25) or a Unix timestamp in milliseconds (e.g., 1451001600000).
  • Responses:
    • Success:

       {
       	"unix": 1451001600000,
       	"utc": "Fri, 25 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT"
       }

    • Invalid input:

       { "error": "Invalid Date" }

Examples

• GET /api/2015-12-25 → { "unix": 1451001600000, "utc": "Fri, 25 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT" }
• GET /api/1451001600000 → { "unix": 1451001600000, "utc": "Fri, 25 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT" }
• GET /api/this-is-not-a-date → { "error": "Invalid Date" }\r
• GET /api → current time

License

MIT