How do I output an ISO 8601 formatted string in JavaScript?

Question

I have a Date object. How do I render the title portion of the following snippet?

Answer 1

The problem with toISOString is that it gives datetime only as "Z".

ISO-8601 also defines datetime with timezone difference in hours and minutes, in the forms like 2016-07-16T19:20:30+5:30 (when timezone is ahead UTC) and 2016-07-16T19:20:30-01:00 (when timezone is behind UTC).

I don't think it is a good idea to use another plugin, moment.js for such a small task, especially when you can get it with a few lines of code.

    var timezone_offset_min = new Date().getTimezoneOffset(),
        offset_hrs = parseInt(Math.abs(timezone_offset_min/60)),
        offset_min = Math.abs(timezone_offset_min%60),
        timezone_standard;

    if(offset_hrs < 10)
        offset_hrs = '0' + offset_hrs;

    if(offset_min > 10)
        offset_min = '0' + offset_min;

    // getTimezoneOffset returns an offset which is positive if the local timezone is behind UTC and vice-versa.
    // So add an opposite sign to the offset
    // If offset is 0, it means timezone is UTC
    if(timezone_offset_min < 0)
        timezone_standard = '+' + offset_hrs + ':' + offset_min;
    else if(timezone_offset_min > 0)
        timezone_standard = '-' + offset_hrs + ':' + offset_min;
    else if(timezone_offset_min == 0)
        timezone_standard = 'Z';

    // Timezone difference in hours and minutes
    // String such as +5:30 or -6:00 or Z
    console.log(timezone_standard); 

Once you have the timezone offset in hours and minutes, you can append to a datetime string.

I wrote a blog post on it : http://usefulangle.com/post/30/javascript-get-date-time-with-offset-hours-minutes

Answer 2

Shortest, but not supported by Internet Explorer 8 and earlier:

new Date().toJSON()

Answer 3

To extend Sean's great and concise answer with some sugar and modern syntax:

// date.js

const getMonthName = (num) => {
  const months = ['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'];
  return months[num];
};

const formatDate = (d) => {
  const date = new Date(d);
  const year = date.getFullYear();
  const month = getMonthName(date.getMonth());
  const day = ('0' + date.getDate()).slice(-2);
  const hour = ('0' + date.getHours()).slice(-2);
  const minutes = ('0' + date.getMinutes()).slice(-2);

  return `${year} ${month} ${day}, ${hour}:${minutes}`;
};

module.exports = formatDate;

Then eg.

import formatDate = require('./date');

const myDate = "2018-07-24T13:44:46.493Z"; // Actual value from wherever, eg. MongoDB date
console.log(formatDate(myDate)); // 2018 Jul 24, 13:44

Answer 4

I typically don't want to display a UTC date since customers don't like doing the conversion in their head. To display a local ISO date, I use the function:

function toLocalIsoString(date, includeSeconds) {
    function pad(n) { return n < 10 ? '0' + n : n }
    var localIsoString = date.getFullYear() + '-'
        + pad(date.getMonth() + 1) + '-'
        + pad(date.getDate()) + 'T'
        + pad(date.getHours()) + ':'
        + pad(date.getMinutes()) + ':'
        + pad(date.getSeconds());
    if(date.getTimezoneOffset() == 0) localIsoString += 'Z';
    return localIsoString;
};

The function above omits time zone offset information (except if local time happens to be UTC), so I use the function below to show the local offset in a single location. You can also append its output to results from the above function if you wish to show the offset in each and every time:

function getOffsetFromUTC() {
    var offset = new Date().getTimezoneOffset();
    return ((offset < 0 ? '+' : '-')
        + pad(Math.abs(offset / 60), 2)
        + ':'
        + pad(Math.abs(offset % 60), 2))
};

toLocalIsoString uses pad. If needed, it works like nearly any pad function, but for the sake of completeness this is what I use:

// Pad a number to length using padChar
function pad(number, length, padChar) {
    if (typeof length === 'undefined') length = 2;
    if (typeof padChar === 'undefined') padChar = '0';
    var str = "" + number;
    while (str.length < length) {
        str = padChar + str;
    }
    return str;
}

Answer 5

I would just use this small extension to Date - http://blog.stevenlevithan.com/archives/date-time-format

var date = new Date(msSinceEpoch);
date.format("isoDateTime"); // 2007-06-09T17:46:21

Answer 6

If you don't need to support IE7, the following is a great, concise hack:

JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(new Date()))