Research Alternatives to Moment JS

[tn3rb]

Need to know the various Pros & Cons of various Date libraries

example:

Library	Pros	Cons
Moment JS	great browser support	older library, does not support tree shaking or other modern JS capabilities

Possible Alternatives

• Luxon
• Date-Fns
• ???

plz try not to spend more than 4 hours on this

[nicolad]

Library	stars	created	Tree-shaking	Pattern	TS support	I18n	Timezone support
Moment JS	42930	Mar 1, 2011	no	OO	yes	yes	Good(moment-timezone)
Luxon	8846	Nov 30, 2015	no	OO	not yet, there is a WIP	Luxon uses the native Intl API	Good(Intl)
date-fns	20599	Oct 6, 2014	yes	FP	yes	67 locales available	yes
dayjs	24564	Apr 10, 2018	no	OO	yes	yes	need more info

[nicolad]

@tn3rb @manzoorwanijk @raphaelkross take a look here ☝️

[nicolad]

Library	pros	cons
Moment JS		- uses chaining - Moment.js is mutable and it causes bugs - Complex OOP API (which doubles mutability problem). - Moment.js has a huge performance overhead because of complex API - It is highly based on OOP APIs, which makes it fail to work with tree-shaking, thus leading to a huge bundle size and performance issues. - comparison with date-fns
Luxon	- Make all the types immutable. - Use the Intl API to provide internationalization. - Luxon has the best time zone support of any JS date library. - Explicit API: Function names describe exactly what they do so it's easier to work with.	- uses chaining - uses OOP
date-fns	- works with the native date type - Functionality-wise date-fns equals to Moment.js. - All of date-fns's code are pure functions (and simple to grok) - Locale and internationalization as configs to display functions	- When comparing a certain date to the current date the function returns a pretty "opinionated" sentence such as "almost 2 years" which can't really be customizable and requires string manipulation to fit result to your needs.
dayjs	- Similar API as Moment.js

Related links

https://blog.bitsrc.io/9-javascript-date-time-libraries-for-2018-12d82f37872d
https://inventi.studio/en/blog/why-you-shouldnt-use-moment-js
https://blog.logrocket.com/4-alternatives-to-moment-js-for-internationalizing-dates/
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/DateTimeFormat

[nicolad]

@tn3rb @manzoorwanijk @raphaelkross

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The floor is open to comments/ thoughts

[tn3rb]

well based on the above, date-fns looks like the clear winner.

re:

When comparing a certain date to the current date the function returns a pretty "opinionated" sentence such as "almost 2 years" which can't really be customizable and requires string manipulation to fit result to your needs.

which function is that referring to?
are there other comparison functions that can be used?

[nicolad]

well based on the above, date-fns looks like the clear winner.

re:

When comparing a certain date to the current date the function returns a pretty "opinionated" sentence such as "almost 2 years" which can't really be customizable and requires string manipulation to fit result to your needs.

which function is that referring to?
are there other comparison functions that can be used?

It's formatDistance function, but we might want to have our own utility function instead and that can use another lib(maybe).

[nicolad]

are there other comparison functions that can be used? - I don't know yet/ didn't investigated a separate function/lib/package, but if we'd go with date-fns we are can pick whatever solution we want since it's using Date object type as input and output, so we are not locked into some specific library object type, like in case of moment or other.

[manzoorwanijk]

@nicolad great details dude! 🥇

[manzoorwanijk]

I also agree that date-fns looks to be the best.

[nicolad]

Ok, I also agree with date-fns.
@tn3rb @manzoorwanijk we need to think of a pathway because we don't want to use the same approach as with old datetime JS model.

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Here is one high-level example: https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/tree/develop/packages/datetime/src/common
we can have smth similar, but without moment

[tn3rb]

that package isn't using moment...
or did you just mean we can do something like but not use moment like the EDTR v1 Date VOs ?

[nicolad]

or did you just mean we can do something like but not use moment like the EDTR v1 Date VOs ?

yes, ezactly this ☝️

[tn3rb]

I had a good look through the date-fns docs and I think they have everything we need already covered.
That said, we'll still need to build some predicates that will operate directly on our entity types

ie: sortTicketsByStartDate()

these can be composed from smaller building blocks located in assets/prototype/domain/shared/predicates

Going to close this now because we are ready to move on to the next step: #2041