JavaScript Date Formats
JavaScript Date Input
There are generally 3 types of JavaScript date input formats:
| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| ISO Date | "2015-03-25" (The International Standard) |
| Short Date | "03/25/2015" |
| Long Date | "Mar 25 2015" or "25 Mar 2015" |
The ISO format follows a strict standard in JavaScript.The other formats are not so well defined and might be browser specific.
JavaScript Date Output
Independent of input format, JavaScript will (by default) output dates in full text string format:
Wed Mar 25 2015 01:00:00 GMT+0100 (West Africa Standard Time)
JavaScript ISO Dates
ISO 8601 is the international standard for the representation of dates and times. The ISO 8601 syntax (YYYY-MM-DD) is also the preferred JavaScript date format:
var d = new Date("2015-03-25");
The computed date will be relative to your time zone.Depending on your time zone, the result above will vary between March 24 and March 25
ISO Dates (Year and Month)
ISO dates can be written without specifying the day (YYYY-MM):
var d = new Date("2015-03");
Time zones will vary the result above between February 28 and March 01.
ISO Dates (Only Year)
ISO dates can be written without month and day (YYYY):
var d = new Date("2015");
Time zones will vary the result above between December 31 2014 and January 01 2015.
ISO Dates (Date-Time)
ISO dates can be written with added hours, minutes, and seconds (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ):
var d = new Date("2015-03-25T12:00:00Z");
Date and time is separated with a capital T. UTC time is defined with a capital letter Z.
If you want to modify the time relative to UTC, remove the Z and add +HH:MM or -HH:MM instead:
var d = new Date("2015-03-25T12:00:00-06:30");
UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) is the same as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).Omitting T or Z in a date-time string can give different results in different browsers.
Time Zones
When setting a date, without specifying the time zone, JavaScript will use the browser's time zone.
When getting a date, without specifying the time zone, the result is converted to the browser's time zone.
In other words: If a date/time is created in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), the date/time will be converted to CDT (Central US Daylight Time) if a user browses from central US.
After the declaration, the variable has no value (technically it has the value of undefined). To assign a value to the variable, use the equal sign: carName = "Volvo";
It's a good programming practice to declare all variables at the beginning of a script.
JavaScript Short Dates.
Short dates are written with an "MM/DD/YYYY" syntax like this:
var d = new Date("03/25/2015");
JavaScript Long Dates.
Long dates are most often written with a "MMM DD YYYY" syntax like this:
var d = new Date("Mar 25 2015");
Month and day can be in any order:
var d = new Date("25 Mar 2015");
And, month can be written in full (January), or abbreviated (Jan):
var d = new Date("January 25 2015");
Commas are ignored. Names are case insensitive:
A typical HTML document structure
var d = new Date("JANUARY, 25, 2015");
Date Input - Parsing Dates
If you have a valid date string, you can use the Date.parse() method to convert it to milliseconds. Date.parse() returns the number of milliseconds between the date and January 1, 1970:
Commas are ignored. Names are case insensitive:
var msec = Date.parse("March 21, 2012");
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = msec;
You can then use the number of milliseconds to convert it to a date object:
var msec = Date.parse("March 21, 2012");
var d = new Date(msec);
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = d;
