Locale detection with Moment.js

Question

I am using Moment.js in my project and formatting dates as follows:

var date = moment.unix(1318781876);
return date.format('LLLL');

The moment docs state the multiple locales are supported. I would like to know if moment.js will auto-detect the locale, or do I need to detect the locale and pass it to moment?

Update My goal is to ensure the displayed date is in the format of the user's region. i.e. in the US the short date format is mm/dd/yy whereas in the UK it is dd/mm/yy

Ol

Answer 1

As of momentjs documentation:

By default, Moment.js comes with English locale strings. If you need other locales, you can load them into Moment.js for later use.

You can change it with that:

moment.locale(locale);

To get the user's locale with javascript you can do that:

var locale = window.navigator.userLanguage || window.navigator.language;

Refer to: http://momentjs.com/docs/#/i18n/changing-locale/

and JavaScript for detecting browser language preference

Dioptometer

So, it stands to reason that the following code could be used directly after loading moment-with-locale.js to ensure moment uses the correct locale for your users throughout the page: moment.locale(window.navigator.userLanguage || window.navigator.language). Is that a correct statement? – Peony

What if a user uses English but lives in China? – Alasteir

@GreyLi that is to ensure correct display of dates (i.e. english format), OP is not talking about timezones. In your case the displayed format would be english. – Dioptometer

Answer 2

For everyone stumbling on this question:

 const locale = navigator.languages && navigator.languages.length ? navigator.languages[0] : navigator.language;

 moment.locale(locale);

in my case I had to not only import moment but also the different locales so I was able to make sure the locale was actually set in moment. Otherwise functions like

moment.localeData();

would just return the default value.

This worked for me:

import moment from "moment/min/moment-with-locales";

Desk

Answer 3

import moment from 'moment';  
import 'moment/locale/fr';  
moment.locale('fr')

View issue comment

Purgatory

I don't understand how this answers the question. You would have to dynamically load the locale module according to the region, so you are moving of detecting the locale from calling momentjs to loading the appropriate module. Moreover, the question mentions UK/US and your answer talks about French. – Frontlet