title: Best method for getting an accurate timestamp?
body: <p>I am working on an app where there is a need for a reliable, accurate timestamp in JavaScript. As such, I would prefer not to rely on the client system time. Although it is likely to be correct, I need something more certain.</p>
  
  <p>I was hoping there was an API available from a well endowed provider such as Google that would allow me to access an accurate timestamp from some server somewhere. I haven't been able to find that, so I came up with another idea: create a tiny dummy file on our server, retrieve it via AJAX and extract our own server's timestamp from response headers: </p>
  
  <pre><code>$.ajax({
   type: 'POST',
   url: 'dummy.json',
   complete: function (response) {
     // header is available as a string: response.getAllResponseHeaders();
   }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Headers:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:07:41 GMT
  Content-length: 18
  Last-modified: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:35:28 GMT
  Server: Netscape-Enterprise/6.1 AOL
  Etag: "0-0-12-0"
  Content-type: text/plain
  Accept-ranges: bytes
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is this not the most ridiculous work-around ever? Am I going crazy? Is there a better solution?</p>
  
  <p>If not could somebody help me write a regex to extract just the date from the above response header string?</p>
  
  <p>edit: forgot to mention the reason why this is a problem is I don't have access to the backend to create some simple service for polling a timestamp from the server or anything like that. I have to do it in JavaScript for this particular application.</p>