Increment a Date Object

To increment date objects in Javascript, we can usually do this:

var checkoutDate = new Date();    // Thu Jul 21 2016 10:05:13 GMT-0400 (EDT)

checkoutDate.setDate( checkoutDate.getDate() + 1 );

console.log(checkoutDate); // Fri Jul 22 2016 10:05:13 GMT-0400 (EDT)

It is possible to use setDate to change the date to a day in the following month by using a value larger than the number of days in the current month -

var checkoutDate = new Date();    // Thu Jul 21 2016 10:05:13 GMT-0400 (EDT)
checkoutDate.setDate( checkoutDate.getDate() + 12 );
console.log(checkoutDate); // Tue Aug 02 2016 10:05:13 GMT-0400 (EDT)

The same applies to other methods such as getHours(), getMonth(),etc.

Adding Work Days

If you wish to add work days (in this case I am assuming Monday - Friday) you can use the setDate function although you need a little extra logic to account for the weekends (obviously this will not take account of national holidays) -

function addWorkDays(startDate, days) {
    // Get the day of the week as a number (0 = Sunday, 1 = Monday, .... 6 = Saturday)
    var dow = startDate.getDay();
    var daysToAdd = days;
    // If the current day is Sunday add one day
    if (dow == 0)
        daysToAdd++;
    // If the start date plus the additional days falls on or after the closest Saturday calculate weekends
    if (dow + daysToAdd >= 6) {
        //Subtract days in current working week from work days
        var remainingWorkDays = daysToAdd - (5 - dow);
        //Add current working week's weekend
        daysToAdd += 2;
        if (remainingWorkDays > 5) {
            //Add two days for each working week by calculating how many weeks are included
            daysToAdd += 2 * Math.floor(remainingWorkDays / 5);
            //Exclude final weekend if remainingWorkDays resolves to an exact number of weeks
            if (remainingWorkDays % 5 == 0)
                daysToAdd -= 2;
        }
    }
    startDate.setDate(startDate.getDate() + daysToAdd);
    return startDate;
}

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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