Subtract days from a date in JavaScript

Answer 1

I like doing the maths in milliseconds. So use Date.now()

var newDate = Date.now() + -5*24*3600*1000; // date 5 days ago in milliseconds

and if you like it formatted

new Date(newDate).toString(); // or .toUTCString or .toISOString ...

NOTE: Date.now() doesn't work in older browsers (eg IE8 I think). Polyfill here.

UPDATE June 2015

@socketpair pointed out my sloppiness. As s/he says "Some day in year have 23 hours, and some 25 due to timezone rules".

To expand on that, the answer above will have daylightsaving inaccuracies in the case where you want to calculate the LOCAL day 5 days ago in a timezone with daylightsaving changes and you

• assume (wrongly) that Date.now() gives you the current LOCAL now time, or
• use .toString() which returns the local date and therefore is incompatible with the Date.now() base date in UTC.

However, it works if you're doing your math all in UTC, eg

A. You want the UTC date 5 days ago from NOW (UTC)

var newDate = Date.now() + -5*24*3600*1000; // date 5 days ago in milliseconds UTC
new Date(newDate).toUTCString(); // or .toISOString(), BUT NOT toString

B. You start with a UTC base date other than "now", using Date.UTC()

newDate = new Date(Date.UTC(2015, 3, 1)).getTime() + -5*24*3600000;
new Date(newDate).toUTCString(); // or .toISOString BUT NOT toString

Answer 2

function addDays (date, daysToAdd) {
  var _24HoursInMilliseconds = 86400000;
  return new Date(date.getTime() + daysToAdd * _24HoursInMilliseconds);
};

var now = new Date();

var yesterday = addDays(now, - 1);

var tomorrow = addDays(now, 1);

Answer 3

Try something like this

dateLimit = (curDate, limit) => {
    offset  = curDate.getDate() + limit
    return new Date( curDate.setDate( offset) )
}

currDate could be any date

limit could be the difference in number of day (positive for future and negative for past)

Answer 4

See the following code, subtract the days from the current date. Also, set the month according to substracted date.

var today = new Date();
var substract_no_of_days = 25;

today.setTime(today.getTime() - substract_no_of_days* 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
var substracted_date = (today.getMonth()+1) + "/" +today.getDate() + "/" + today.getFullYear();

alert(substracted_date);

Answer 5

The top answers led to a bug in my code where on the first of the month it would set a future date in the current month. Here is what I did,

curDate = new Date(); // Took current date as an example
prvDate = new Date(0); // Date set to epoch 0
prvDate.setUTCMilliseconds((curDate - (5 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000))); //Set epoch time

Answer 6

When setting the date, the date converts to milliseconds, so you need to convert it back to a date:

This method also take into consideration, new year change etc.

function addDays( date, days ) {
    var dateInMs = date.setDate(date.getDate() - days);
    return new Date(dateInMs);
}

var date_from = new Date();
var date_to = addDays( new Date(), parseInt(days) );