[Locale] How to get short distance units?

[RKBoss6]

I might be missing something obvious here, but is there a way to get the short distance units like ft or m? Some apps use only m, and I'm looking to convert it to be international, using those units that the user has set. When you install the locale app, there is a field for short distance, but after my research, I can't for the life of me find a way to access those units... Any help is much appreciated!

[gfwilliams]

You can use:

// Distance/Length (in meters) to formatted String
>require("locale").distance(150)
="150m"

// Automatic unit selection for larger distances
>require("locale").distance(15000)
="15km"

The units will change depending on the magnitude of the value you pass in - or are you saying you want to always have the small units, regardless of the magnitude?

The code that handles distance is at https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/blob/master/apps/locale/locale.html#L208, and I guess it might be possible to change it to force it, but we'd also have to change the version in the Espruino firmware.

We have date_utils to provide some extra features on top of locale (https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/blob/master/modules/date_utils.js) and you could add distance_utils that did something like:

• At startup, do require("locale").distance(100) (small enough it'll always use small distance units)
• Split off the numeric + text part
• Provide a method shortDistance(d) { return Math.round(d*numericPart/100) + textPart; }

[RKBoss6]

@gfwilliams That looks good, thanks! Does it automatically convert to feet if that was selected? I'm looking for a way to see if feet was selected for short distances, or meters. Thanks!

[RKBoss6]

Never mind, that works, thanks so much!