JavaScript Date Formats
JavaScript Date Input
There are generally 4 types of JavaScript date input 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:
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:
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):
Time zones will vary the result above between February 28 and March 01.
It can be written without month and day (YYYY):
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)
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 Short Dates.
Short dates are most often written with an "MM/DD/YYYY" syntax like this:
JavaScript will also accept "YYYY/MM/DD":
Month is written before day in all short date and ISO date formats.
Leading Zero WARNING !
In most browsers, ISO dates with months or days with no leading zeroes will be interpreted as short dates:
JavaScript Long Dates.
Long dates are most often written with a "MMM DD YYYY" syntax like this:
Month and day can be in any order:
And, month can be written in full (January), or abbreviated (Jan):
Commas are ignored. Names are case insensitive:
Full Date Format
JavaScript will accept date strings in "full JavaScript format":
Example
JavaScript will ignore errors both in the day name and in the time parentheses:
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.
