finding angles 0-360
The atan function only gives half the unit circle between -pi/2 and +pi/2 (0 on x axis), there is another library function that can give the whole unit circle between -pi and + pi, atan2
I would think you are better of using atan2 to get the right quadrant rather than branching yourself, then just scale as you have been, something like
Math.atan2(y2 - y1, x2 - x1) * 180 / Math.PI + 180
The multiply by 180 over pi is just the scale from radians to degrees as in the question (but with the division by a division simplified), the +180 makes sure its always positive i.e. 0-360 deg rather than -180 to 180 deg
Math.atan limits you to the two rightmost quadrants on the unit circle. To get the full 0-360 degrees:
if x < 0 add 180 to the angle
else if y < 0 add 360 to the angle.
Your coordinate system is rotated and inverted compared to mine (and compared to convention). Positive x is to the right, positive y is up. 0 degrees is to the right (x>0, y=0, 90 degrees is up (x=0,y>0) 135 degrees is up and to the left (y>0, x=-y), etc. Where are your x- and y-axes pointing?
The answers of @jilles de wit and @jk. led me on the right path but for some reason did not provide the right solution for my problem that i think is very similar to the original question.
I wanted to get up = 0°, right = 90°, down = 180°, left = 270° as in aeronautical navigation systems.
Presuming the question was referring to canvas drawing i reached this solution:
I first translated the canvas origin using ctx.translate(ctx.canvas.width / 2, ctx.canvas.height / 2)
. I also halved e.offsetX and e.offsedY i got from a mouse event on the canvas to get x and y with the same coordinate system as the canvas.
let radianAngle = Math.atan2(y, x); // x has the range [-canvas.width/2 ... +canvas.width/2], y is similar
let northUpAngle = radianAngle * 180 / PI + 90; // convert to degrees and add 90 to shift the angle counterclockwise from it's default "left" = 0°
if (x < 0 && y < 0) { // check for the top left quadrant
northUpAngle += 360; // add 360 to convert the range of the quadrant from [-90...0] to [270...360] (actual ranges may vary due to the way atan2 handles quadrant boundaries)
}
northUpAngle.toFixed(2) // to avoid getting 360° near the "up" position
There might be a more concise solution using the modulo operation but i could't find it.