How to get the day of week and the month of the year?

Question

I don't know much about Javascript, and the other questions I found are related to operations on dates, not only getting the information as I need it.

Objective

I wish to get the date as below-formatted:

Printed on Thursday, 27 January 2011 at 17:42:21

So far, I got the following:

var now = new Date();
var h = now.getHours();
var m = now.getMinutes();
var s = now.getSeconds();

h = checkTime(h);
m = checkTime(m);
s = checkTime(s);

var prnDt = "Printed on Thursday, " + now.getDate() + " January " + now.getFullYear() + " at " + h + ":" + m + ":" s;

I now need to know how to get the day of week and the month of year (their names).

Is there a simple way to make it, or shall I consider using arrays where I would simply index to the right value using now.getMonth() and now.getDay()?

Edwards

Answer 1

Yes, you'll need arrays.

var days = ['Sunday','Monday','Tuesday','Wednesday','Thursday','Friday','Saturday'];
var months = ['January','February','March','April','May','June','July','August','September','October','November','December'];

var day = days[ now.getDay() ];
var month = months[ now.getMonth() ];

Or you can use the date.js library.

---

EDIT:

If you're going to use these frequently, you may want to extend Date.prototype for accessibility.

(function() {
    var days = ['Sunday','Monday','Tuesday','Wednesday','Thursday','Friday','Saturday'];

    var months = ['January','February','March','April','May','June','July','August','September','October','November','December'];

    Date.prototype.getMonthName = function() {
        return months[ this.getMonth() ];
    };
    Date.prototype.getDayName = function() {
        return days[ this.getDay() ];
    };
})();

var now = new Date();

var day = now.getDayName();
var month = now.getMonthName();

Stirps

@Will: You're welcome. FYI, if you're going to be doing this frequently, you could easily prototype the functionality into the Date object. I'll update in a minute. – Stirps

Localize your data and there's no need for one-language-only arrays! selectedLocale = 'en-us'; selectedDate.toLocaleString(selectedLocale, { month: "long" }); – Pappano

I did this just now but had to use Monday as the first element in the array, not Sunday. Still, works great. – Mceachern

No, no ,no ,no. Just use the standard javascript Date class. No need for arrays or an extra library. See my answer: https://mcmap.net/q/142962/-how-to-get-the-day-of-week-and-the-month-of-the-year – Medawar

Answer 2

Use the standard javascript Date class. No need for arrays. No need for extra libraries.

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toLocaleDateString

var options = {  weekday: 'long', year: 'numeric', month: 'long', day: 'numeric', hour: '2-digit', minute: '2-digit', second: '2-digit', hour12: false };
var prnDt = 'Printed on ' + new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-us', options);

console.log(prnDt);

Medawar

@Medawar this is nice, but how do I manage to get only the weekday without the rest of the date part? I.E. I want saturday instead of saturday, 9th february 2019. – Spiel

@Valdimir Nul: var prnDt = 'Printed on ' + new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-us', { weekday: 'long' }); console.log(prnDt); – Medawar

Definitely the best way to do it. – Nancienancy

@Vladimir There is an issue with Firefox, time is always displayed, then: new Date().toLocaleTimeString(language, { weekday: 'long'}).split(' ')[0] – Dunlin

This just displays the time for me. – Barre

This is the way. – Subdiaconate

Answer 3

I think this's the best solution I found

new Date(payload.value).toLocaleString("en", { weekday: "long" })

Bumbailiff

Answer 4

One thing you can also do is Extend date object to return Weekday by:

Date.prototype.getWeekDay = function() {
    var weekday = ["Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"];
    return weekday[this.getDay()];
}

so, you can only call date.getWeekDay();

Cannibalism

Answer 5

As @L-Ray has already suggested, you can look into moment.js as well

Sample

var today = moment();
var result = {
  day: today.format("dddd"),
  month: today.format("MMM")
}

document.write("<pre>" + JSON.stringify(result,0,4) + "</pre>");

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.13.0/moment.min.js"></script>

Clamper

Answer 6

From https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toLocaleDateString

The toLocaleDateString() method returns a string with a language sensitive representation of the date portion of this date. The new locales and options arguments let applications specify the language whose formatting conventions should be used and allow to customize the behavior of the function. In older implementations, which ignore the locales and options arguments, the locale used and the form of the string returned are entirely implementation dependent.

Long form:

const options = { weekday: 'long' };
const date = new Date();
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString('en-US', options));

One liner:

console.log(new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-US', { weekday: 'long' }));

Note: there are other language options for locale, but the one presented here for for US English

Touber

Answer 7

var GetWeekDays = function (format) {
    var weekDays = {};

    var curDate = new Date();
    for (var i = 0; i < 7; ++i) {
        weekDays[curDate.getDay()] = curDate.toLocaleDateString('ru-RU', {
            weekday: format ? format : 'short'
        });

        curDate.setDate(curDate.getDate() + 1);
    }

    return weekDays;
};

me.GetMonthNames = function (format) {
    var monthNames = {};

    var curDate = new Date();
    for (var i = 0; i < 12; ++i) {
        monthNames[curDate.getMonth()] = curDate.toLocaleDateString('ru-RU', {
            month: format ? format : 'long'
        });

        curDate.setMonth(curDate.getMonth() + 1);
    }

    return monthNames;
};

Crabb

ru-RU would be en-US (for American English) or en-GB (for British English). – Ineligible

Answer 8

Unfortunately, Date object in javascript returns information about months only in numeric format. The faster thing you can do is to create an array of months (they are not supposed to change frequently!) and create a function which returns the name based on the number.

Something like this:

function getMonthNameByMonthNumber(mm) { 
   var months = new Array("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"); 

   return months[mm]; 
}

Your code therefore becomes:

var prnDt = "Printed on Thursday, " + now.getDate() + " " + getMonthNameByMonthNumber(now.getMonth) + " "+  now.getFullYear() + " at " + h + ":" + m + ":" s;

Holcomb

Don't use new Array() unless you have a reason to. The [] notation is much clearer and easier to understand – Salgado

Answer 9

Using http://phrogz.net/JS/FormatDateTime_JS.txt you can just:

var now = new Date;
var prnDt = now.customFormat( "Printed on #DDDD#, #D# #MMMM# #YYYY# at #hhh#:#mm#:#ss#" );

Jay

Answer 10

You can look at datejs which parses the localized date output for example.

The formatting may look like this, in your example:

new Date().toString('dddd, d MMMM yyyy at HH:mm:ss') 

Malorie

Answer 11

  function currentDate() {
      var monthNames = [ "JANUARY", "FEBRUARY", "MARCH", "APRIL", "MAY", "JUNE",
                     "JULY", "AUGUST", "SEPTEMBER", "OCTOBER", "NOVEMBER", "DECEMBER" ];
      var days = ['SUNDAY','MONDAY','TUESDAY','WEDNESDAY','THURSDAY','FRIDAY','SATURDAY'];                       
      var today = new Date();
      var dd   = today.getDate();
      var mm   = monthNames[today.getMonth()]; 
      var yyyy = today.getFullYear();
      var day  = days[today.getDay()];
      today = 'Date is :' + dd + '-' + mm + '-' + yyyy;
      document.write(today +"<br>");
      document.write('Day is : ' + day );
  }
  currentDate();

Stealer

Answer 12

That's simple. You can set option to display only week days in toLocaleDateString() to get the names. For example:

(new Date()).toLocaleDateString('en-US',{ weekday: 'long'}) will return only the day of the week. And (new Date()).toLocaleDateString('en-US',{ month: 'long'}) will return only the month of the year.

Aerophone

Answer 13

We can use the below snippet if the week starts from 1: 'Monday',2: 'Tuesday', 3: 'Wednesday',4: 'Thursday', 5: 'Friday',6: 'Saturday',7:'Sunday'.

let weekDays = {
  1: 'Monday',
  2: 'Tuesday', 
  3: 'Wednesday',
  4: 'Thursday',
  5: 'Friday',
  6: 'Saturday',
  7:'Sunday'};
return weekDays[dt];

Dinge

this could be simplified to a list in which the index is the number. like so let weekDays = ['Monday', 'Tuesday' ... ] – Haematite

Answer 14

new Date().toUTCString()

might be good enough for your purposes. It formats the string as: Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:59:59 GMT https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toUTCString

Territorialize

Answer 15

Write the Date = <script> document.write(Date()); </script>

Wildawildcat

how is this the solution the OP's problem ? – Distaff

This script captures the updated date and time – Wildawildcat