Latest web development tutorials
 

JavaScript Date Formats

❮ Previous Next Chapter ❯

JavaScript Date Input

There are generally 4 types of JavaScript date formats:

Type Example
ISO Date "2015-03-25" (The International Standard)
Short Date "03/25/2015" or "2015/03/25"
Long Date "Mar 25 2015" or "25 Mar 2015"
Full Date "Wednesday March 25 2015"

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 (W. Europe 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:

Example (Complete date)

var d = new Date("2015-03-25");
Try it Yourself »

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.

It can be written without specifying the day (YYYY-MM):

Example (Year and month)

var d = new Date("2015-03");
Try it Yourself »

Time zones will vary the result above between February 28 and March 01.

It can be written without month and day (YYYY):

Example (Only year)

var d = new Date("2015");
Try it Yourself »

Time zones will vary the result above between December 31 2014 and January 01 2015.

It can be written with added hours, minutes, and seconds (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS):

Example (Complete date plus hours, minutes, and seconds)

var d = new Date("2015-03-25T12:00:00");
Try it Yourself »

The T in the date string, between the date and time, indicates UTC time.

UTC (Universal Time Coordinated)  is the same as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).

JavaScript Long Dates.

Long dates are most often written with a "MMM DD YYYY" syntax like this:

Example

var d = new Date("Mar 25 2015");
Try it Yourself »

Month and day can be in any order:

Example

var d = new Date("25 Mar 2015");
Try it Yourself »

And, month can be written in full (January), or abbreviated (Jan):

Example

var d = new Date("January 25 2015");
Try it Yourself »

Example

var d = new Date("Jan 25 2015");
Try it Yourself »

Commas are ignored. Names are case insensitive:

Example

var d = new Date("JANUARY, 25, 2015");
Try it Yourself »

JavaScript Short Dates.

Short dates are most often written with an "MM/DD/YYYY" syntax like this:

Example

var d = new Date("03/25/2015");
Try it Yourself »

JavaScript will also accept "YYYY/MM/DD":

Example

var d = new Date("2015/03/25");
Try it Yourself »

Month is written before day in all short date and ISO date formats.

Full Date Format

JavaScript will accept date strings in "full JavaScript format":

Example

var d = new Date("Wed Mar 25 2015 09:56:24 GMT+0100 (W. Europe Standard Time)");
Try it Yourself »

JavaScript will ignore errors both in the day name and in the time parentheses:

Example

var d = new Date("Fri Mar 25 2015 09:56:24 GMT+0100 (Tokyo Time)");
Try it Yourself »

Time Zones

JavaScript accepts these time zones:

Time Zone Description
UTC Coordinated Universal Time
GMT Greenwich Mean Time
EDT (US) Eastern Daylight Time
CDT (US) Central Daylight Time
MDT (US) Mountain Daylight Time
PDT (US) Pacific Daylight Time
EST (US) Eastern Standard Time
CST (US) Central Standard Time
MST (US) Mountain Standard Time
PST (US) Pacific Standard Time

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.


❮ Previous Next Chapter ❯