little-date

Small & sweet date-range formatting

An opinionated library that makes date-ranges short and readable.

_{Prepared by Timo Lins 👨‍🍳 during a ▲ Vercel Hackathon}

Introduction

When displaying date-ranges in UI, they are often too long, repetitive, and hard to read. little-date solves this problem by making date ranges short, readable, and easy to understand.

Consider this example:

// Typical long format
console.log(`${from.toLocaleString()} - ${to.toLocaleString()}`);
// Output: "1/1/2024, 00:00:00 AM - 1/12/2024, 23:59:59 PM"

// With little-date
console.log(formatDateRange(from, to));
// Output: "Jan 1 - 12"

It significantly reduces the clutter while maintaining clarity. It's perfect for dashboards, reports, or any UI where space is at a premium.

little-date is based based on date-fns. It supports localization and can be used in both Node.js and the browser.

Examples dates ✨

• Jan 1 - 12
• Jan 3 - Apr 20
• January 2023
• Q1 2023

Wasn't that easy to read? You can find a full list of formatting examples here.

Usage

import { formatDateRange } from "little-date";

const from = new Date("2023-01-01T00:00:00.000Z");
const to = new Date("2023-01-12T23:59:59.999Z");

formatDateRange(from, to); // Outputs: "Jan 1 - 12"

Installation

With pnpm

pnpm i little-date

With NPM

npm i little-date

Formatting Examples

Description	Output
Multiple days, same month	Jan 1 - 12
Multiple days, different months	Jan 3 - Apr 20
Full day	Sun, Jan 1
Range spanning different years	Jan 1 '22 - Jan 20 '23
Multiple days, same month, past year	Jan 1 - 12, 2022
Full day, past year	Sat, Jan 1, 2022
Special cases
Full year	2023
Quarter range	Q1 2023
Full month	January 2023
Full months	Jan - Feb 2023
With time
Today, different hours	12am - 2:30pm
Same day, different hours	Jan 1, 12:11am - 2:30pm
Same day, different hours, 24-hour format	Jan 1, 0:11 - 14:30
Hour difference within a day	Jan 1, 12pm - 12:59pm
Different days with time included	Jan 1, 12:11am - Jan 2, 2:30pm
Different years with time	Jan 1 '22, 12:11am - Jan 2 '23, 2:30pm
Different years, no time	Jan 1 '22 - Jan 2 '23

Advanced Options

Most of of the formatting behavior is opinionated and can't be changed. However, there are some options that can be used to customize the output.

import { formatDateRange } from "little-date";

// ...

formatDateRange(from, to, {
  locale: "de-AT", // Overwrite the default locale
  includeTime: false, // Prevent time from being displayed
  today: new Date(), // Overwrite the default "today" date, useful for testing
  separator: "-", // Overwrite the default separator. E.g. from "Jan 1 - 12" to "Jan 1 to 12"
});

Customization

To keep things simple, there is minimal customization offered by little-date.

For more extensive customization beyond the provided options, it's recommended to copy the implementation from src/format-date-range.ts into your own repository. This allows you to modify the formatting logic to precisely fit your needs.

Contribute

We welcome contributions! If you'd like to improve little-date or have any feedback, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

MIT