Temporal.Instant.prototype.epochNanoseconds

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The epochNanoseconds accessor property of Temporal.Instant instances returns a BigInt representing the number of nanoseconds elapsed since the Unix epoch (midnight at the beginning of January 1, 1970, UTC) to this instant.

The set accessor of epochNanoseconds is undefined. You cannot change this property directly. To create a new Temporal.Instant object with the desired new epochNanoseconds value, use the Temporal.Instant.fromEpochNanoseconds() static method instead.

An instant can only represent ±10⁸ days (about ±273,972.6 years) around the epoch, which is ±8.64e21 nanoseconds. Attempting to set epochNanoseconds beyond this boundary throws a RangeError.

Examples

Using epochNanoseconds

const instant = Temporal.Instant.from("2021-08-01T12:34:56.789Z");
console.log(instant.epochNanoseconds); // 1627821296789000000n

const instant2 = Temporal.Instant.from("1969-08-01T12:34:56.789Z");
console.log(instant2.epochNanoseconds); // -13173903211000000n

Changing epochNanoseconds

This is the method that allows you to move by any amount of time:

const instant = Temporal.Instant.from("2021-08-01T12:34:56.789Z");
const instant1hourLater = instant.add({ hours: 1 });
console.log(instant1hourLater.epochNanoseconds); // 1627824896789000000n

If you already know the change in nanoseconds, you can also directly construct a new Temporal.Instant object:

const instant = Temporal.Instant.from("2021-08-01T12:34:56.789Z");
const instant1hourLater = Temporal.Instant.fromEpochNanoseconds(
  instant.epochNanoseconds + 3600000000000n,
);
console.log(instant1hourLater.epochNanoseconds); // 1627824896789000000n