duration-parser

Parse human-readable durations to milliseconds and format back; ISO 8601 support.

Quick Start

import { parse, format } from "duration-parser";

const ms = parse("2h30m");           // 9000000
const ms2 = parse("1.5 days");       // 129600000
const ms3 = parse("PT2H30M");        // 9000000 (ISO 8601)

format(ms);                           // "2h 30m"
format(ms, { long: true });          // "2 hours, 30 minutes"

API

parse(input: string): number

Parse human-readable duration to milliseconds. Supports:

• Compact format: "2h30m", "90s", "1w2d"
• Long format: "1.5 days", "2 hours 30 minutes"
• ISO 8601: "PT2H30M", "P1DT3H45M30S"
• Plural/singular: "1 second", "2 seconds"

Throws Error on invalid format.

format(ms: number, opts?: FormatOptions): string

Format milliseconds back to human-readable duration.

Options:

• long?: boolean — Use long format ("2 hours") instead of compact ("2h")

Limitations

• Rounds intermediate calculations to whole milliseconds
• No locale-specific translations
• Week/month/year approximations: assumes 7d = 1w, no month/year (use libraries like date-fns for calendar math)

Part of the ferrow-toolkit collection · Sponsored by Ferrow