Parse duration strings to milliseconds

Useful for parsing timeout values, cache TTLs, rate limits, and other duration-based configuration in a human-friendly format.

See pretty-ms for the inverse.

npm install parse-duration-ms

import parseDuration from 'parse-duration-ms';
parseDuration('1h');
//=> 3600000
parseDuration('90m');
//=> 5400000
parseDuration('2 days 5 hours 30 minutes');
//=> 192600000
parseDuration('1hr 30min');
//=> 5400000
parseDuration('500ms');
//=> 500
parseDuration('1.5 hours');
//=> 5400000
parseDuration('1h41m');
//=> 6060000
parseDuration('invalid');
//=> undefined

Parses a duration string to milliseconds.

Returns undefined if the input is invalid.

Throws a TypeError if the input is not a string.

Type: string

The duration string to parse.

Features:

• Multiple units: '1h 30m', '2d 5h 30m', '1 hour 30 minutes'
• Shortened forms: '1hr 30min', '90mins', '2w 3d'
• Decimal values: '1.5h', '0.5m', '1.5 hours'
• With or without spaces: '1h30m', '1h 30m', '1hour', '1 hour'
• Case insensitive: '1H', '30M', '1 HOUR'
• Negative values: '-1h', '-30m'

Supported units:

Months and years aren't fixed durations. They vary (28-31 days for months, 365-366 for years). Any approximation would be silently wrong in many cases. Be explicit instead: use '30d' for ~1 month or '365d' for ~1 year.

This package parses combined units like '1h 30m' and '2 days 5 hours'. The ms package does bidirectional conversion but doesn't support combined units.

No. This keeps the package simple and small.

No. This only parses relative durations (lengths of time), not absolute times.

• pretty-ms - Convert milliseconds to a human readable string
• to-milliseconds - Convert an object of time properties to milliseconds
• parse-ms - Parse milliseconds into an object