Timestamp Microservice - Can someone explain how I get my app to send an error if the date is inputted in the wrong format?

1 
// server.js
// where your node app starts

// init project
var express = require('express');
var app = express();

// enable CORS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing)
// so that your API is remotely testable by FCC 
var cors = require('cors');
app.use(cors({optionSuccessStatus: 200}));  // some legacy browsers choke on 204

// http://expressjs.com/en/starter/static-files.html
app.use(express.static('public'));

// http://expressjs.com/en/starter/basic-routing.html
app.get("/", function (req, res) {
  res.sendFile(__dirname + '/views/index.html');
});


// your first API endpoint... 
app.get("/api/hello", function (req, res) {
  res.json({greeting: 'hello API'});
});




app.get("/api/timestamp/:dateVal", function(req,res,next){

var dateVal = req.params.dateVal;

  
var dateFormatingOptions = {
year:'numeric',
month:'long',
day:'numeric',
time: 'numeric'   
};
  
  
if(isNaN(dateVal)){
var naturalDate = new Date(dateVal)
naturalDate = naturalDate.toUTCString("en-uk", dateFormatingOptions)
var unixDate = new Date(dateVal).getTime();
}



res.json({unix: unixDate, utc: naturalDate})
});



// listen for requests :)


var listener = app.listen(process.env.PORT, function () {
  console.log('Your app is listening on port ' + listener.address().port);
});
2

hi,
you could do something like this:

res.json(dateInCorrectFormat ?
              {unix: unixDate, utc: naturalDate} :
              {"error" : "Invalid Date"})

Or are you having trouble how to determine if date is in correct format?

3

This code seems to give me an error. It keeps saying that there’s an unexpected token.

4

Did you replaced placeholder dateInCorrectFormat with code?
Are you building you project on Glitch? If so - you could share the link so it would be easier to debug :slight_smile:

5
6

Do you mean a placeholder for the date?

7

Cannot open your link for some reason… (glitch returns: “We didn’t find trite-dahlia”).

condition ? exprIfTrue : exprIfFalse

By placeholder I mean that dateInCorrectFormat is not a built in Javascript function. You need to replace dateInCorrectFormat with some condition that checks if date is in correct format.

Hint: when date is not valid - new Date() returns “Invalid Date” .

8

All solved now! Thanks

1 Like