date-format

What is date-format?

The date-format npm package is a simple utility for formatting dates in JavaScript. It allows you to format dates in various patterns, making it easier to display dates in a human-readable format or in a specific format required by your application.

What are date-format's main functionalities?

Basic Date Formatting

This feature allows you to format a date object into a string with a specified pattern. In this example, the current date is formatted as 'yyyy-MM-dd'.

const dateFormat = require('date-format');
const now = new Date();
console.log(dateFormat('yyyy-MM-dd', now));

Custom Date Formatting

This feature allows you to create custom date formats. In this example, the current time is formatted to show hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.

const dateFormat = require('date-format');
const now = new Date();
console.log(dateFormat('hh:mm:ss.SSS', now));

Predefined Date Formats

This feature provides predefined date formats for common use cases. In this example, the current date and time are formatted in ISO 8601 format.

const dateFormat = require('date-format');
const now = new Date();
console.log(dateFormat.asString(dateFormat.ISO8601_FORMAT, now));

Other packages similar to date-format

moment

Moment.js is a widely-used library for parsing, validating, manipulating, and formatting dates in JavaScript. It offers a more extensive set of features compared to date-format, including time zone support and relative time formatting.

date-fns

date-fns is a modern JavaScript date utility library that provides a comprehensive set of functions for working with dates. It is modular, allowing you to import only the functions you need, which can help reduce bundle size compared to moment.js.

luxon

Luxon is a library for working with dates and times in JavaScript. It is built on top of the native JavaScript Date object and provides a more modern API compared to moment.js. Luxon also includes support for time zones and internationalization.

README

date-format

node.js formatting of Date objects as strings. Probably exactly the same as some other library out there.

npm install date-format

usage

Formatting dates as strings

var format = require('date-format');
format.asString(); // defaults to ISO8601 format and current date
format.asString(new Date()); // defaults to ISO8601 format
format.asString('hh:mm:ss.SSS', new Date()); // just the time
format.asString(format.ISO8601_WITH_TZ_OFFSET_FORMAT, new Date()); // in ISO8601 with timezone

or

var format = require('date-format');
format(); // defaults to ISO8601 format and current date
format(new Date()); // defaults to ISO8601 format
format('hh:mm:ss.SSS', new Date()); // just the time
format(format.ISO8601_WITH_TZ_OFFSET_FORMAT, new Date()); // in ISO8601 with timezone

output:

2017-03-14T14:10:20.391
2017-03-14T14:10:20.391
14:10:20.391
2017-03-14T14:10:20.391+11:00

Format string can be anything, but the following letters will be replaced (and leading zeroes added if necessary):

• dd - date.getDate()
• MM - date.getMonth() + 1
• yy - date.getFullYear().toString().substring(2, 4)
• yyyy - date.getFullYear()
• hh - date.getHours()
• mm - date.getMinutes()
• ss - date.getSeconds()
• SSS - date.getMilliseconds()
• O - timezone offset in ±hh:mm format (note that time will still be local if displaying offset)

Built-in formats:

• format.ISO8601_FORMAT - 2017-03-14T14:10:20.391 (local time used)
• format.ISO8601_WITH_TZ_OFFSET_FORMAT - 2017-03-14T14:10:20.391+11:00 (local + TZ used)
• format.DATETIME_FORMAT - 14 03 2017 14:10:20.391 (local time used)
• format.ABSOLUTETIME_FORMAT - 14:10:20.391 (local time used)

Parsing strings as dates

The date format library has limited ability to parse strings into dates. It can convert strings created using date format patterns (as above), but if you're looking for anything more sophisticated than that you should probably look for a better library (momentjs does pretty much everything).

var format = require('date-format');
// pass in the format of the string as first argument
format.parse(format.ISO8601_FORMAT, '2017-03-14T14:10:20.391');
format.parse(format.ISO8601_WITH_TZ_OFFSET_FORMAT, '2017-03-14T14:10:20.391+1100');
format.parse(format.ISO8601_WITH_TZ_OFFSET_FORMAT, '2017-03-14T14:10:20.391+11:00');
format.parse(format.ISO8601_WITH_TZ_OFFSET_FORMAT, '2017-03-14T03:10:20.391Z');
// returns Date