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JavaScript Practice Object Interaction Checking Out and Returning a Book Solution: Charging Fines to Patrons

Farid Lavizadeh
Farid Lavizadeh
12,006 Points
Posted by Farid Lavizadeh
Farid Lavizadeh
12,006 Points

DayLate can't be correct.

const daysLate = dateDiff.getDate() in the code will always gets a day of a month, not total number of days. While this works if the number of days is less than 30 days, I don't see h it would work for someone who is, say, 100 days late. I keep trying this in the console and I can never get the correct answer.

Mark Westerweel
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Mark Westerweel
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 22,378 Points
Mark Westerweel
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Mark Westerweel
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 22,378 Points

True, tried it over here as well. In this way you get a discount for returning later than a month, lol.

We can use the two dates and add a getTime() method to find out the difference in TIME. We can convert that to amount of days and work our way from there.

Here's a link to the concept

3 Answers

Cory Aston
Cory Aston
6,058 Points
Cory Aston
Cory Aston
6,058 Points

I saw the same problem... solved it with simple date math. I was working from the books perspective not the patrons perspective but the logic is the same.

const todayDate = new Date(); const fine = (this.books[x].dueDate.getDate() - todayDate.getDate()) * this.dailyFine;

Andy Hartono
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Andy Hartono
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 12,335 Points
Andy Hartono
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Andy Hartono
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 12,335 Points

Yes, that is correct.

Using getTime() will be the most accurate. The following is my solution

  const today = new Date()
  const msLapse = today.getTime() - book.dueDate.getTime()
  const dayLapse = msLapse / 86400000 // 1 day = 86.400.000 ms

  // now charge the fine
  book.patron.balance += dayLapse * this.dailyFine
devcollin
devcollin
7,489 Points
devcollin
devcollin
7,489 Points

Yeah, this is definitely a bug.

Put together this stand-alone test based on the course's solution, so anyone can try it out in their console.

let date = new Date('1-1-2021');
let lateDate = new Date();
lateDate.setDate(lateDate.getDate() - 100); // 100 days late
const dateDiff = new Date(date - lateDate);
const daysLate = dateDiff.getDate();
console.log(daysLate); // result: 17 days late - INCORRECT

This produces a result of 17 days late, even though I hard-coded 100 days late. This is because the .getDate method of Date returns the day of the month (1-31 depending on the month). So the math ends up being all wrong because it will never return a number over 31.