A simple and fast Calendar Conversion API you can try today
What’s today’s date?
The answer to that is fairly straightforward and accessible, as most countries today all use the same calendar: the Gregorian calendar. I’m not going to go into the history of Pope Gregory XIII or why this calendar is named after him, (that’s something I welcome you to research for yourself). But did you know that before October 1582 the world followed a different calendar called the Julian calendar?
For centuries since, countries around the world were forced to choose which calendar to follow. It wasn’t until 1918 after the October Revolution that Russia finally became the last major country to cast aside the outdated Julian calendar and join the rest of the world in using the Gregorian calendar. Since the world used both calendars, both yielding slightly different dates, the goal of dating historical events became geographical in nature as well. So going back to the October Revolution: according to Julian calendar that Imperial Russia calendar was using it was October 25th, but to the rest of the world it was November 7th.
Confusing, right?
I recently deployed an API that will allow you to convert dates to this calendar as well as several other calendars, including the French Republican calendar, Maya calendar, Islamic calendar¹, and Hebrew calendar. Each of these calendars are vastly different, some are lunar calendars (as opposed to the Gregorian which is a solar calendar), some follow 10-day weeks instead of 7-day weeks, and some don’t have the concept of weeks or months built into them at all!
I’ve deployed this API on a platform called RapidAPI, which allows me to make quick updates and releases, as I plan on supporting more calendars in the future.
You can find this API here, and start playing with it today. If you’re wanting to build an app that can convert to different calendars, for example, this API will quickly feed you the dates, so you don’t have to worry about cluttering up your code base with a slew of astronomical equations.
So now to answer the original question: “what’s todays date”, you can answer with:
- December 4, 2021 (Gregorian),
- June 21, 2021 (Julian),
- 14 Frimaire, CCXXX (French Republican),
- Rabi’ ath-Thani 4, 1443 (Islamic),
- 10 Kislev, 440 (Hebrew)
Notes:
¹ The Islamic calendar, also known as the Hijri calendar, is much more complex as it has regional variations. Currently, the supported version is the Islamic Civil calendar using the West Islamic leap year rule. I am adding support for the remaining regional variations including East Islamic, Taiyabi Al-Ismaili and Habash Al-Hasib.
