Parsing a string to a date in JavaScript

Question

How can I convert a string to a Date object in JavaScript?

var st = "date in some format"
var dt = new Date();

var dt_st = // st in Date format, same as dt.

Colubrid

possible duplicate of convert Java datestring to javascript date and a lot more – Daze

Oh I'm confused now. Do you want Date -> String or String -> Date ? – Daze

consider momentjs.com – Acis

Simple solution: Use ISOString formatting var st = "05/05/2020" var dateTime1 = new Date(st).toISOString().replace(/T.+/, ' 00:00:00') console.log(dateTime1) – Westernmost

What if var st = "Monday, August 10th 2020"? Any and for this? – Mass

It's now 2021, consider to use date-fns lib, the method parse – Metalepsis

I prefer date-fns over other libs, because it acts on the Date javascript` class, Specially when I fetch results from `PostgreSQL – Metalepsis

parse("Monday, August 10th 2020", "EEEE, mmmm do yyyy", new Date(),) – Metalepsis

If you have a UNIX timestamp or a similar number like 1644861097000, see Convert a Unix timestamp to time in JavaScript. If you’re looking how to format a Date to a string, see How to format a JavaScript date. – Parkinson

Moment.js is now effectively deprecated – Bullshit

Answer 1

The best string format for string parsing is the date ISO format together with the JavaScript Date object constructor.

Examples of ISO format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.

But wait! Just using the "ISO format" doesn't work reliably by itself. String are sometimes parsed as UTC and sometimes as localtime (based on browser vendor and version). The best practice should always be to store dates as UTC and make computations as UTC.

To parse a date as UTC, append a Z - e.g.: new Date('2011-04-11T10:20:30Z').

To display a date in UTC, use .toUTCString(),
to display a date in user's local time, use .toString().

More info on MDN | Date and this answer.

For old Internet Explorer compatibility (IE versions less than 9 do not support ISO format in Date constructor), you should split datetime string representation to it's parts and then you can use constructor using datetime parts, e.g.: new Date('2011', '04' - 1, '11', '11', '51', '00'). Note that the number of the month must be 1 less.

---

Alternate method - use an appropriate library:

You can also take advantage of the library Moment.js that allows parsing date with the specified time zone.

Micrometer

I also had to use the "split the string" method for safari for the same "Nan" issue Paul Tomblin brought up. new Date('2011-04-11 11:51:00') would return 'invalid date'. – Ehrlich

@Amos: Notice the letter T, which separates the date and time. If you write new Date('2011-04-11T11:51:00') the date created is valid. – Micrometer

Unfortunately I bumped into the issue that *it doesn't work for ALL users. – Radiotelephony

@Pavel Hodek Yes sure. I bumped into the same issue #17960160 because it depends from time of the day & client location you may be in situation when the code works correctly for you, but incorrectly for other users. – Radiotelephony

Letting Date parse a string is the worst way to create a Date object. Far better to parse the string manually and call Date as a constructor. Some browsers will treat an ISO string without timezone as UTC, others as local. – Hiramhirasuna

new Date('1970-30-02') gives me invalid date in chrome – Raby

@Ben Taliadoros: Yes, it is invalid in all common browsers, new Date('1970-30-02') is invalid date because there is not 30 months in a year. You can't overflow months but when you overflow days then it resolves in Chrome and Firefox to a valid date: new Date('1970-02-30') is then the same day as new Date('1970-03-02'). – Micrometer

(+1) for Important note, I never faced this issue on my machine or my client's machine but when i deployed the code to client's server, it started misbehaving with all the dates. Strangely, if the month is December, it will show it as January next year. – Forgotten

Hi, look at this: new Date('2011-04-11T00:00:00Z'); return Sun Apr 10 2011 21:00:00 GMT-0300 (ART) – Sideboard

I agree with RobG. Use the Date(year, month, day, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds) constructor to avoid any time zone ambiguity. All UTC/local conversions should be done on the server instead of trusting the browser. There are many cases when you'd generate HTML content on the server: for reports and just text - containing dates. You want to do the conversion in one place - knowing anything that goes to the browser, or is received from there is local. You'd need some initial handshake call to communicate the browser's time zone/offset to the server though. Not rocket science. – Introversion

I have this string 2016-10-29 18:03:23.626 how can i convert this string into JavaScript Date() object? – Kit

@ArpitMeena Simply moment('2016-10-29 18:03:23.626').toDate();. See momentjs.com/docs/#/parsing/string – Micrometer

doesnt work with dates DD/MM/YYYY and that's a format used in input fields... (in many places around the world) – Nicotinism

@razor: The Moment.js library works properly with date format you suggested, try: moment("29/10/2016", "DD/MM/YYYYY").toDate() – Micrometer

Also worth referencing Why does Date.parse give incorrect results? – Hiramhirasuna

I have a date string that has already been converted to local time (I have no control over that) so it is in the format "2018-01-25T06:00:00". In Chrome and Edge new Date() converts properly to "Thu Jan 25 2018 06:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)" but in Safari it converts to "Thu Jan 25 2018 01:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)" because it is converting as UTC, not local. Is there a way to indicate it is local? – Basutoland

If you are stuck in Date Hell: const now = new Date(new Date().toLocaleString() + "Z"); – Scenery

@BenTaliadoros—ECMA-262 has required timestamps like '1970-02-30' to return an invalid Date since limited support for ISO 8601 formats was introduced (ECMAScript 2015?). It's in a format supported by the spec but isn't a valid date. – Hiramhirasuna

@Christine—not having a timezone or Z is supposed to mean local but Safari is buggy. The best advice is to avoid the built–in parser—use a library or bespoke parser. It's only a couple of lines of code to parse ISO 8601 timestamps, including validation of the format and values. – Hiramhirasuna

passing "yyyy-mm-dd" in the Date constructor is unreliable. b/c the Date constructor sets the day back by 1. This is a terrible inconsistency. "mm/dd/yyyy" converts fine. However, I need this to work as I've built a comparison prototype. However, in order to do this, I must first convert the ISO format to the conventional and how di I know if my comparison method is receiving ISO vs conventional. All that's left is to build a separate proto method who's job it is to convert all of the potential formats into one that Date can handle... in effect doing Date() job for it. – Takeshi

The dash format might lead to unsuspected results ... #70481829 – Eclampsia

Moment.js is now effectively deprecated – Bullshit

Answer 2

Unfortunately I found out that

var mydate = new Date('2014-04-03');
console.log(mydate.toDateString());

returns "Wed Apr 02 2014". I know it sounds crazy, but it happens for some users.

The bulletproof solution is the following:

var parts ='2014-04-03'.split('-');
// Please pay attention to the month (parts[1]); JavaScript counts months from 0:
// January - 0, February - 1, etc.
var mydate = new Date(parts[0], parts[1] - 1, parts[2]); 
console.log(mydate.toDateString());

Radiotelephony

It's not crazy at all, the adjustment is most likely caused by DST kicking in. Dates in the format of yyyy-MM-dd are parsed as UTC and toString returns the local time therefore depending on the users timezone it can most definitely return different results. If always want the time as UTC then you should use toUTCString. – Pomona

Been banging my head on this one. This seems to work, but I don't understand why you used parts[0]-1 and not just parts[0]. – Orly

@AdamYoungers Due to Javascript counts months from 0: January - 0, February - 1, etc – Radiotelephony

This answer suggests that the behavior in the example is incorrect. Per the spec: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/… (see: datestring) the outputed value in the example would be correct – Sylviasylviculture

I still get a wrong date for 22-12-2020 with bulletproof solution. This gave me 1928-06-10T16:00:00.000Z – Impostor

@Impostor did you try '2020-12-22' instead of 22-12-2020 :) – Radiotelephony

A nifty way to unpack arguments var [YYYY, MM, DD] = '2014-04-03'.split('-') – Alper

In my view, a better solution would be new Date('2014-04-03'+"T00:00:00"), because it will give you the same solution and it's simpler. Additionally this solution is more error proof, because doesn't accept month above 12 or day above 31, giving you an Invalid Date in that situation. – Romilda

var [YYYY, MM, DD] = '2014-04-03'.split('-') ; var mydate = new Date(parseInt(yyyy), parseInt(MM) - 1, parseInt(dd)); – Leucoma

Answer 3

var st = "26.04.2013";
var pattern = /(\d{2})\.(\d{2})\.(\d{4})/;
var dt = new Date(st.replace(pattern,'$3-$2-$1'));

And the output will be:

dt => Date {Fri Apr 26 2013}

Reputed

Unfortunately there is an issue with this solution. Details here: #17960160 – Radiotelephony

The output is unknown, because your code does neither convert anything to a string, nor output anything. – Lilianaliliane

This will actually return Fri Apr 25 – Moisten

Answer 4

function stringToDate(_date,_format,_delimiter)
{
            var formatLowerCase=_format.toLowerCase();
            var formatItems=formatLowerCase.split(_delimiter);
            var dateItems=_date.split(_delimiter);
            var monthIndex=formatItems.indexOf("mm");
            var dayIndex=formatItems.indexOf("dd");
            var yearIndex=formatItems.indexOf("yyyy");
            var month=parseInt(dateItems[monthIndex]);
            month-=1;
            var formatedDate = new Date(dateItems[yearIndex],month,dateItems[dayIndex]);
            return formatedDate;
}

stringToDate("17/9/2014","dd/MM/yyyy","/");
stringToDate("9/17/2014","mm/dd/yyyy","/")
stringToDate("9-17-2014","mm-dd-yyyy","-")

Microchemistry

Handles dates from every variation not just US formatting – Inspan

@MarkJones Do not trust the .indexOf() method as it is not cross browser compatible without polyfils. Instead, use the more compatible .match() or .test() vanilla JS methods. – Lengthy

Adding var _delimiter = _format.match(/\W/g)[0]; at the beginning of the function you can get the delimiter automatically and prescind of the 3rd parameter. – Echinate

This date format is wrong. It's because mm is for minutes not months... use MM in your formats – Currin

Answer 5

Recommendation: I recommend to use a package for dates that contains a lot of formats because the timezone and format time management is really a big problem, moment js solve a lot of formats. You could parse easily date from a simple string to date but I think that is a hard work to support all formats and variations of dates.

Update: Moment is now deprecated, A good alternative for moment is datefns https://date-fns.org/

---

moment.js (http://momentjs.com/) is a complete and good package for use dates and supports ISO 8601 strings.

You could add a string date and format.

moment("12-25-1995", "MM-DD-YYYY");

And you could check if a date is valid.

moment("not a real date").isValid(); //Returns false

Some display examples

let dt = moment("02-01-2019", "MM-DD-YYYY");
console.log(dt.fromNow()+' |'+dt.format('LL')) 
// output: "3 months ago | February 1, 2019"

See documentation http://momentjs.com/docs/#/parsing/string-format/

Enhance

Some display examples let dt = moment("02-01-2019", "MM-DD-YYYY");console.log(dt.fromNow()+' | '+dt.format('LL')) outputs: "3 months ago | February 1, 2019" – Spaniard

Moment.js is not deprecated. From the link in the answer: "We now generally consider Moment to be a legacy project in maintenance mode. It is not dead, but it is indeed done.". – Hiramhirasuna

Answer 6

Pass it as an argument to Date():

var st = "date in some format"
var dt = new Date(st);

You can access the date, month, year using, for example: dt.getMonth().

Malleus

i do console.log(new Date('30-08-2018')) and get invalid date – Congenital

This answer ignores multiple complexities to this problem, for example, if I do this for a date 01/02/2020 on my computer (in the UK) it will return 1st Feburary where as if the same thing is done in the US it will return 2nd January. You should pretty much never use this naive implementation. Use moment instead. – Bullshit

Answer 7

Just new Date(st);

Assuming that it's the proper format.

Daisydaitzman

No, this is a terrible idea unless you are certain that the input is always going to be in a format that Date will parse correctly. It will break in various parts of the world. – Tica

@JulianKnight - I literally said "Assuming that it's in the proper format". And no, it won't break in various parts of the world, lol – Daisydaitzman

Then you didn't really answer the question. Please compare yours against the accepted answer. Your answer WILL break under many circumstances. How about new Date("3/2/20") - what does that produce for you? Do you think it produces the same answer for me? Unless we are in the same country, almost certainly not. As I said, it is a terrible idea. Sarcasm does not make it right. – Tica

@JulianKnight -- IN THE PROPER FORMAT. Your example has as much validity as new Date('a tomato'). ISO 8601 is a proper format. 3/2/20 is not. – Daisydaitzman

Sorry but that is a very unhelpful reply. Of course ISO formats are the best approach in many cases but it isn't always feasible. What if this is about input from a website? Will you get everyone in the world and force them to use ISO date formats? The "PROPER" format depends on the context not some techie view of the world. – Tica

Answer 8

If you can use the terrific luxon library you can easily parse your date using e.g.

var luxonDate = DateTime.fromISO("2014-09-15T09:00:00");

and can access the JS date object via

luxonDate().toJSDate();

---

The old answer used MomentJS

var momentDate = moment("2014-09-15 09:00:00");
momentDate ().toDate();

Powys

please note that moment works just fine without node – Hayleyhayloft

I got NaN error in my android and IOS devices while using this code, however it was working in desktop. here is the code I was using before: var dateTimeOfTimeIn = new Date(year + "-" + month + "-" + day + "T" + data.timeIn); using this approach and moment library, my problem got solved and my code is now working fine in all of my devices! – Mulkey

moment is now deprecated – Bullshit

Answer 9

For those who are looking for a tiny and smart solution:

String.prototype.toDate = function(format)
{
  var normalized      = this.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/g, '-');
  var normalizedFormat= format.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/g, '-');
  var formatItems     = normalizedFormat.split('-');
  var dateItems       = normalized.split('-');

  var monthIndex  = formatItems.indexOf("mm");
  var dayIndex    = formatItems.indexOf("dd");
  var yearIndex   = formatItems.indexOf("yyyy");
  var hourIndex     = formatItems.indexOf("hh");
  var minutesIndex  = formatItems.indexOf("ii");
  var secondsIndex  = formatItems.indexOf("ss");

  var today = new Date();

  var year  = yearIndex>-1  ? dateItems[yearIndex]    : today.getFullYear();
  var month = monthIndex>-1 ? dateItems[monthIndex]-1 : today.getMonth()-1;
  var day   = dayIndex>-1   ? dateItems[dayIndex]     : today.getDate();

  var hour    = hourIndex>-1      ? dateItems[hourIndex]    : today.getHours();
  var minute  = minutesIndex>-1   ? dateItems[minutesIndex] : today.getMinutes();
  var second  = secondsIndex>-1   ? dateItems[secondsIndex] : today.getSeconds();

  return new Date(year,month,day,hour,minute,second);
};

Example:

"22/03/2016 14:03:01".toDate("dd/mm/yyyy hh:ii:ss");
"2016-03-29 18:30:00".toDate("yyyy-mm-dd hh:ii:ss");

Rota

Not a good idea to mess with the String.prototype, it can cause really hard to find bugs – Tica

It is true that messing up with the String.prototype is not a good idea, but the ground base of this helps me a lot. I form it into a function to go save. – Exposition

Answer 10

new Date(2000, 10, 1) will give you "Wed Nov 01 2000 00:00:00 GMT+0100 (CET)"

See that 0 for month gives you January

Proterozoic

Answer 11

That's the best and simpler solution in my view:

Just concatenate your date string (using ISO format) with "T00:00:00" in the end and use the JavaScript Date() constructor, like the example below.

const dateString = '2014-04-03'
var mydate = new Date(dateString + "T00:00:00");
console.log(mydate.toDateString());

And just a few details about the solution above (but optional reading):

In ISO format, if you provide time and Z is not present in the end of string, the date will be local time zone instead of UTC time zone. That means, when setting a date in this way, without specifying the time zone, JavaScript will use the local browser's time zone. And when getting a date, without specifying the time zone as well, the result is also converted to the browser's time zone. And, by default, almost every date method in JavaScript (except one) gives you a date/time in local time zone as well (you only get UTC if you specify UTC). So, using in local/browser time zone you probably won't get unwanted results because difference between your local/browse time zone and the UTC time zone, which is one of the main complaints with date string conversion. But if you will use this solution, understand your context and be aware of what you are doing. And also be careful that omitting T or Z in a date-time string can give different results in different browsers.

Important to note that the example above will give you exactly the same return to this example below, that is the second most voted answer in this question:

var parts ='2014-04-03'.split('-');
// Please pay attention to the month (parts[1]); JavaScript counts months from 0:
// January - 0, February - 1, etc.
var mydate = new Date(parts[0], parts[1] - 1, parts[2]); 
console.log(mydate.toDateString());

The main difference is that the first example provided here is simpler and even more error proof than the second one (at least in my view, as explained below).

Because if you call the JavaScript Date() constructor date with just one date-string argument in ISO format (first example), it doesn't accept values above its logical limit (so, if you give 13 as month or 32 as day, you get Invalid Date).

But when you use the same constructor with multiple date-arguments (second example), parameters above it logical limit will be adjusted to the adjacent value and you won't get Invalid Date Error (so, if you give 13 as month, it will adjust to 1, instead of give you an Invalid Date).

Or an alternative (and third) solution would be mix both, use the first example just to validate the date-string and if it is valid use the second example (so you avoid possible browsers inconsistences of the first example and at the same time avoid the permission of parameters above it logical limit of the second example).

Like so (accepting partial dates as well):

function covertStringToDate(dateString) {
    //dateString should be in ISO format: "yyyy-mm-dd", "yyyy-mm" or "yyyy"
    if(new Date(dateString).toString() === "Invalid Date") {
        return false
    } else {
        const onlyNumbers = dateString.replace(/\D/g, ""); 
        const year = onlyNumbers.slice(0,4) 
        const month = onlyNumbers.slice(4,6)
        const day = onlyNumbers.slice(6,8)
        if(!month){
            return(new Date(year))
        } else if (!day) {
            return(new Date(year, month - 1))
        } else {
            return(new Date(year, month - 1, day))
        }        
    }
}

And a fourth alternative (and last suggestion) would be to use an appropriate third library (like moment or date-fns)

References:

• https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_date_formats.asp
• https://css-tricks.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-date-in-javascript/
• https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-BR/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date#parameters

Romilda

Answer 12

If you want to convert from the format "dd/MM/yyyy". Here is an example:

var pattern = /^(\d{1,2})\/(\d{1,2})\/(\d{4})$/;
var arrayDate = stringDate.match(pattern);
var dt = new Date(arrayDate[3], arrayDate[2] - 1, arrayDate[1]);

This solution works in IE versions less than 9.

Caplan

Answer 13

Timestamps should be casted to a Number

var ts = '1471793029764';
ts = Number(ts); // cast it to a Number
var date = new Date(ts); // works

var invalidDate = new Date('1471793029764'); // does not work. Invalid Date

Ringleader

What about the undefined value? Like: var date = new Date(undefined)? – Viniculture

@BennyNeugebauer well check if a value is undefined before you try to pass it to the Date constructor. Maybe you want to throw an exception or maybe you want to fallback to a default date, who knows? – Ringleader

Answer 14

Date.parse almost gets you what you want. It chokes on the am/pm part, but with some hacking you can get it to work:

var str = 'Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:30pm',
    timestamp;

timestamp = Date.parse(str.replace(/[ap]m$/i, ''));

if(str.match(/pm$/i) >= 0) {
    timestamp += 12 * 60 * 60 * 1000;
}

Gantry

Not a good idea if you need to support multiple (especially older) browsers. See the MDN entry. – Tica

#2587845 – Jacklyn

Answer 15

Performance

Today (2020.05.08) I perform tests for chosen solutions - for two cases: input date is ISO8601 string (Ad,Bd,Cd,Dd,Ed) and input date is timestamp (At, Ct, Dt). Solutions Bd,Cd,Ct not return js Date object as results, but I add them because they can be useful but I not compare them with valid solutions. This results can be useful for massive date parsing.

Conclusions

• Solution new Date (Ad) is 50-100x faster than moment.js (Dd) for all browsers for ISO date and timestamp
• Solution new Date (Ad) is ~10x faster than parseDate (Ed)
• Solution Date.parse(Bd) is fastest if wee need to get timestamp from ISO date on all browsers

Details

I perform test on MacOs High Sierra 10.13.6 on Chrome 81.0, Safari 13.1, Firefox 75.0. Solution parseDate (Ed) use new Date(0) and manually set UTC date components.

let ds = '2020-05-14T00:00Z'; // Valid ISO8601 UTC date
let ts = +'1589328000000';    // timestamp

let Ad = new Date(ds);
let Bd = Date.parse(ds);
let Cd = moment(ds);
let Dd = moment(ds).toDate();
let Ed = parseDate(ds);

let At = new Date(ts);
let Ct = moment(ts);
let Dt = moment(ts).toDate();

log = (n,d) => console.log(`${n}: ${+d} ${d}`);

console.log('from date string:', ds)
log('Ad', Ad);
log('Bd', Bd);
log('Cd', Cd);
log('Dd', Dd);
log('Ed', Ed);
console.log('from timestamp:', ts)
log('At', At);
log('Ct', Ct);
log('Dt', Dt);



function parseDate(dateStr) {
  let [year,month,day] = dateStr.split(' ')[0].split('-');
  let d=new Date(0);
  d.setUTCFullYear(year);
  d.setUTCMonth(month-1);
  d.setUTCDate(day)
  return d;
}

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.19.1/moment-with-locales.min.js"></script>

This snippet only presents used soultions  

Results for chrome

Sufism

Answer 16

Convert to format pt-BR:

    var dateString = "13/10/2014";
    var dataSplit = dateString.split('/');
    var dateConverted;

    if (dataSplit[2].split(" ").length > 1) {

        var hora = dataSplit[2].split(" ")[1].split(':');
        dataSplit[2] = dataSplit[2].split(" ")[0];
        dateConverted = new Date(dataSplit[2], dataSplit[1]-1, dataSplit[0], hora[0], hora[1]);

    } else {
        dateConverted = new Date(dataSplit[2], dataSplit[1] - 1, dataSplit[0]);
    }

I hope help somebody!!!

Rb

Answer 17

I have created a fiddle for this, you can use toDate() function on any date string and provide the date format. This will return you a Date object. https://jsfiddle.net/Sushil231088/q56yd0rp/

"17/9/2014".toDate("dd/MM/yyyy", "/")

Disillusion

Messing with String.prototype is likely to end in tears. – Tica

This is a link to a solution, not a solution. To see the code for this solution, without having to go to a different site, see this answer. – Jacklyn

Answer 18

For сonverting string to date in js i use http://momentjs.com/

moment().format('MMMM Do YYYY, h:mm:ss a'); // August 16th 2015, 4:17:24 pm
moment().format('dddd');                    // Sunday
moment().format("MMM Do YY");               // Aug 16th 15
moment().format('YYYY [escaped] YYYY');     // 2015 escaped 2015
moment("20111031", "YYYYMMDD").fromNow(); // 4 years ago
moment("20120620", "YYYYMMDD").fromNow(); // 3 years ago
moment().startOf('day').fromNow();        // 16 hours ago
moment().endOf('day').fromNow();          // in 8 hours

Ignoble

moment() by default takes current date. How to format a string which is in "2016-06-27 17:49:51.951602+05:30" format using moment. – Lajuanalake

Answer 19

I made this function to convert any Date object to a UTC Date object.

function dateToUTC(date) {
    return new Date(date.getUTCFullYear(), date.getUTCMonth(), date.getUTCDate(), date.getUTCHours(), date.getUTCMinutes(), date.getUTCSeconds());
}


dateToUTC(new Date());

Elagabalus

Answer 20

You can using regex to parse string to detail time then create date or any return format like :

//example : let dateString = "2018-08-17 01:02:03.4"

function strToDate(dateString){
    let reggie = /(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2}) (\d{2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2}).(\d{1})/
  , [,year, month, day, hours, minutes, seconds, miliseconds] = reggie.exec(dateString)
  , dateObject = new Date(year, month-1, day, hours, minutes, seconds, miliseconds);
  return dateObject;
}
alert(strToDate(dateString));

Whorl

Answer 21

You Can try this:

function formatDate(userDOB) {
  const dob = new Date(userDOB);

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

  const day = dob.getDate();
  const monthIndex = dob.getMonth();
  const year = dob.getFullYear();

  // return day + ' ' + monthNames[monthIndex] + ' ' + year;
  return `${day} ${monthNames[monthIndex]} ${year}`;
}

console.log(formatDate('1982-08-10'));

Atony

Answer 22

This answer is based on Kassem's answer but it also handles two-digit years. I submitted an edit to Kassem's answer, but in case it wasn't approved, I'm also submitting this as a separate answer.

function stringToDate(_date,_format,_delimiter) {
        var formatLowerCase=_format.toLowerCase();
        var formatItems=formatLowerCase.split(_delimiter);
        var dateItems=_date.split(_delimiter);
        var monthIndex=formatItems.indexOf("mm");
        var dayIndex=formatItems.indexOf("dd");
        var yearIndex=formatItems.indexOf("yyyy");
        var year = parseInt(dateItems[yearIndex]); 
        // adjust for 2 digit year
        if (year < 100) { year += 2000; }
        var month=parseInt(dateItems[monthIndex]);
        month-=1;
        var formatedDate = new Date(year,month,dateItems[dayIndex]);
        return formatedDate;
}

stringToDate("17/9/14","dd/MM/yyyy","/");
stringToDate("17/9/2014","dd/MM/yyyy","/");
stringToDate("9/17/2014","mm/dd/yyyy","/")
stringToDate("9-17-2014","mm-dd-yyyy","-")

Sholokhov

Answer 23

var date = new Date(year, month, day);

or

var date = new Date('01/01/1970');

date string in format '01-01-1970' will not work in FireFox, So better use "/" instead of "-" in date format string.

Disintegration

my string is "2015/08/03 13:06:16" strill in FF it is not working – Whitford

Answer 24

Yet another way to do it:

String.prototype.toDate = function(format) {
    format = format || "dmy";
    var separator = this.match(/[^0-9]/)[0];
    var components = this.split(separator);
    var day, month, year;
    for (var key in format) {
        var fmt_value = format[key];
        var value = components[key];
        switch (fmt_value) {
            case "d":
                day = parseInt(value);
                break;
            case "m":
                month = parseInt(value)-1;
                break;
            case "y":
                year = parseInt(value);
        }
    }
    return new Date(year, month, day);
};
a = "3/2/2017";
console.log(a.toDate("dmy"));
// Date 2017-02-03T00:00:00.000Z

Armelda

Ah! Neat! Finally a code that takes care of whatever separator is used. – Minyan

But a bad idea to mess with the String.prototype. Likely to cause very hard to find bugs. – Tica

Answer 25

If you need to check the contents of the string before converting to Date format:

// Convert 'M/D/YY' to Date()
mdyToDate = function(mdy) {
  var d = mdy.split(/[\/\-\.]/, 3);

  if (d.length != 3) return null;

  // Check if date is valid
  var mon = parseInt(d[0]), 
      day = parseInt(d[1]),
      year= parseInt(d[2]);
  if (d[2].length == 2) year += 2000;
  if (day <= 31 && mon <= 12 && year >= 2015)
    return new Date(year, mon - 1, day);

  return null; 
}

Kauri

Answer 26

I have created parseDateTime function to convert the string to date object and it is working in all browser (including IE browser), check if anyone required, reference https://github.com/Umesh-Markande/Parse-String-to-Date-in-all-browser

    function parseDateTime(datetime) {
            var monthNames = [
                "January", "February", "March",
                "April", "May", "June", "July",
                "August", "September", "October",
                "November", "December"
              ];
            if(datetime.split(' ').length == 3){
                var date = datetime.split(' ')[0];
                var time = datetime.split(' ')[1].replace('.00','');
                var timearray = time.split(':');
                var hours = parseInt(time.split(':')[0]);
                var format = datetime.split(' ')[2];
                var bits = date.split(/\D/);
                date = new Date(bits[0], --bits[1], bits[2]); /* if you change format of datetime which is passed to this function, you need to change bits e.x ( bits[0], bits[1], bits[2 ]) position as per date, months and year it represent bits array.*/
                var day = date.getDate();
                var monthIndex = date.getMonth();
                var year = date.getFullYear();
                if ((format === 'PM' || format === 'pm') && hours !== 12) {
                    hours += 12;
                    try{  time = hours+':'+timearray[1]+':'+timearray[2] }catch(e){ time = hours+':'+timearray[1] }
                } 
                var formateddatetime = new Date(monthNames[monthIndex] + ' ' + day + '  ' + year + ' ' + time);
                return formateddatetime;
            }else if(datetime.split(' ').length == 2){
                var date = datetime.split(' ')[0];
                var time = datetime.split(' ')[1];
                var bits = date.split(/\D/);
                var datetimevalue = new Date(bits[0], --bits[1], bits[2]); /* if you change format of datetime which is passed to this function, you need to change bits e.x ( bits[0], bits[1], bits[2 ]) position as per date, months and year it represent bits array.*/
                var day = datetimevalue.getDate();
                var monthIndex = datetimevalue.getMonth();
                var year = datetimevalue.getFullYear();
                var formateddatetime = new Date(monthNames[monthIndex] + ' ' + day + '  ' + year + ' ' + time);
                return formateddatetime;
            }else if(datetime != ''){
                var bits = datetime.split(/\D/);
                var date = new Date(bits[0], --bits[1], bits[2]); /* if you change format of datetime which is passed to this function, you need to change bits e.x ( bits[0], bits[1], bits[2 ]) position as per date, months and year it represent bits array.*/
                return date;
            }
            return datetime;
        }

    var date1 = '2018-05-14 05:04:22 AM';   // yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss A
    var date2 = '2018/05/14 05:04:22 AM';   // yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss A
    var date3 = '2018/05/04';   // yyyy/mm/dd
    var date4 = '2018-05-04';   // yyyy-mm-dd
    var date5 = '2018-05-14 15:04:22';   // yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss
    var date6 = '2018/05/14 14:04:22';   // yyyy/mm/dd HH:mm:ss

    console.log(parseDateTime(date1))
    console.log(parseDateTime(date2))
    console.log(parseDateTime(date3))
    console.log(parseDateTime(date4))
    console.log(parseDateTime(date5))
    console.log(parseDateTime(date6))

**Output---**
Mon May 14 2018 05:04:22 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)
Mon May 14 2018 05:04:22 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)
Fri May 04 2018 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)
Fri May 04 2018 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)
Mon May 14 2018 15:04:22 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)
Mon May 14 2018 14:04:22 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)

Quadrireme

Answer 27

ISO 8601-esque datestrings, as excellent as the standard is, are still not widely supported.

This is a great resource to figure out which datestring format you should use:

http://dygraphs.com/date-formats.html

Yes, that means that your datestring could be as simple as as opposed to

"2014/10/13 23:57:52" instead of "2014-10-13 23:57:52"

Laliberte

Answer 28

As an addon to what has been explained here, you can create your Date with new Date() and format it with the incredibly useful toLocaleDateString() function

An example:

console.log(new Date('1970-01-01').toLocaleDateString('es-ES')) // --> This will output '1/1/1970'

Ardine

This does the opposite to what the question is asking for. – Ticonderoga

Answer 29

                //little bit of code for Converting dates 

                var dat1 = document.getElementById('inputDate').value;
                var date1 = new Date(dat1)//converts string to date object
                alert(date1);
                var dat2 = document.getElementById('inputFinishDate').value;
                var date2 = new Date(dat2)
                alert(date2);

Evolutionary

Answer 30

var a = "13:15"
var b = toDate(a, "h:m")
//alert(b);
document.write(b);

function toDate(dStr, format) {
  var now = new Date();
  if (format == "h:m") {
    now.setHours(dStr.substr(0, dStr.indexOf(":")));
    now.setMinutes(dStr.substr(dStr.indexOf(":") + 1));
    now.setSeconds(0);
    return now;
  } else
    return "Invalid Format";
}

Gauche

Answer 31

use this code : (my problem was solved with this code)

function dateDiff(date1, date2){
var diff = {}                           // Initialisation du retour
var tmp = date2 - date1;

tmp = Math.floor(tmp/1000);             // Nombre de secondes entre les 2 dates
diff.sec = tmp % 60;                    // Extraction du nombre de secondes

tmp = Math.floor((tmp-diff.sec)/60);    // Nombre de minutes (partie entière)
diff.min = tmp % 60;                    // Extraction du nombre de minutes

tmp = Math.floor((tmp-diff.min)/60);    // Nombre d'heures (entières)
diff.hour = tmp % 24;                   // Extraction du nombre d'heures

tmp = Math.floor((tmp-diff.hour)/24);   // Nombre de jours restants
diff.day = tmp;

return diff;

}

Electrophilic

please explain your answer – Delly

date1 and date2 parameters must have format as date right. – Electrophilic

the function return date named diff . If you want the number of day returned just do like that: var result=dateDiff(date1,date2); var day_number=result.day ; it is easy – Electrophilic

Answer 32

I wrote a reusable function that i use when i get date strings from the server.
you can pass your desired delimiter( / - etc..) that separates the day month and year in order to use the split() method.
you can see & test it on this working example.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <style>
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div>
      <span>day:
      </span> 
      <span id='day'>
      </span>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span>month:
      </span> 
      <span id='month'>
      </span>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span>year:
      </span> 
      <span id='year'>
      </span>
    </div>
    <br/>
    <input type="button" id="" value="convert" onClick="convert('/','28/10/1980')"/>
    <span>28/10/1980
    </span>
    <script>
      function convert(delimiter,dateString)
      {
        var splitted = dateString.split('/');
        // create a new date from the splitted string 
        var myDate = new Date(splitted[2],splitted[1],splitted[0]);
        // now you can access the Date and use its methods 
        document.getElementById('day').innerHTML = myDate.getDate();
        document.getElementById('month').innerHTML = myDate.getMonth();
        document.getElementById('year').innerHTML = myDate.getFullYear();
      }
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Embassy

Answer 33

Yet another way to do it is to build a regex with named capture groups over the format string and then use that regex to extract the day, month and year from the date string:

function parseDate(dateStr, format) {
  const regex = format.toLocaleLowerCase()
    .replace(/\bd+\b/, '(?<day>\\d+)')
    .replace(/\bm+\b/, '(?<month>\\d+)')
    .replace(/\by+\b/, '(?<year>\\d+)')
  
  const parts = new RegExp(regex).exec(dateStr) || {};
  const { year, month, day } = parts.groups || {};
  return parts.length === 4 ? new Date(year, month-1, day) : undefined;
}

const printDate = x => console.log(x ? x.toLocaleDateString() : x);

printDate(parseDate('05/11/1896', 'dd/mm/YYYY'));
printDate(parseDate('07-12-2000', 'dd-mm-yy'));
printDate(parseDate('07:12:2000', 'dd:mm:yy'));
printDate(parseDate('2017/6/3', 'yy/MM/dd'));
printDate(parseDate('2017-6-15', 'y-m-d'));
printDate(parseDate('2015 6 25', 'y m d'));
printDate(parseDate('2015625', 'y m d')); // bad format

Update

nice solution, but you maybe are not aware that Firefox still does not support RegExp named groups - bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362154 (PS: it's not me who downvoted your answer) – Stumper

Answer 34

You can also do: mydate.toLocaleDateString();

Vibrant

Answer 35

use this format....

//get current date in javascript

  var currentDate = new Date();


// for getting a date from a textbox as string format

   var newDate=document.getElementById("<%=textBox1.ClientID%>").value;

// convert this date to date time

   var MyDate = new Date(newDate);

Walczak

There are no "New Date()" in javascript. w3schools.com/js/js_dates.asp – Ascot

@Ascot I don't get it. Of course there is a "new Date()" constructor in JS. – Brawl

Wondering why this answer got downvoted so badly. – Unstrap