How do you convert a JavaScript date to UTC?

Question

Suppose a user of your website enters a date range.

2009-1-1 to 2009-1-3

You need to send this date to a server for some processing, but the server expects all dates and times to be in UTC.

Now suppose the user is in Alaska or Hawaii or Fiji. Since they are in a timezone quite different from UTC, the date range needs to be converted to something like this:

2009-1-1T8:00:00 to 2009-1-4T7:59:59

Using the JavaScript Date object, how would you convert the first "localized" date range into something the server will understand?

Answer 1

I just discovered that the 1.2.3 version of Steven Levithan's date.format.js does just what I want. It allows you to supply a format string for a JavaScript date and will convert from local time to UTC. Here's the code I'm using now:

// JavaScript dates don't like hyphens!    
var rectifiedDateText = dateText.replace(/-/g, "/");
var d = new Date(rectifiedDateText);

// Using a predefined mask from date.format.js.
var convertedDate = dateFormat(d, 'isoUtcDateTime'); 

Answer 2

Looking at your question its clear that you just want to send the date range to your backend for further post processing.

I am assuming you are conforming to the standard data guidelines which expect the data to be in a particular format. For example, I use ODATA which is a RESTfull API which expects date time objects to be in the format:-

YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.

That can be easily achieved via the snippet posted below(Please change the format as per your requirement).

var mydate;//assuming this is my date object which I want to expose var UTCDateStr = mydate.getUTCFullYear() + "-" + mydate.getUTCMonth() + "-" + mydate.getUTCDate() + "T00:00:00";

If on the other hand, you are in my situation wherein you have received a date from your backend, and the browser converts that to your local date. You on the other hand are interested in the UTC date then you can perform the following:-

var mydate;//assuming this is my date object which I want to expose var UTCDate = new Date(mydate);/*create a copy of your date object. Only needed if you for some reason need the original local date*/ UTCDate.setTime(UTCDate.getTime() + UTCDate.getTimezoneOffset() * 60 * 1000);

The code snippet above basically adds/subtracts the time added/subtracted by the browser based on the timezone.

For example if I am in EST(GMT-5) and my Service returns a date time object = Wed Aug 17 2016 00:00:00 GMT-0500 my browser automatically subtracts the timezone offset(5hrs) to get my local time. So if I try to fetch the time I get Wed Aug 16 2016 19:00:00 GMT-0500. This causes a lot of problems. There are a lot of libraries out there which will definitely make this easier but I wanted to share the pure JS approach.

For more info please have a look at: http://praveenlobo.com/blog/how-to-convert-javascript-local-date-to-utc-and-utc-to-local-date/ where in I got my inspiration.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Simple and stupid

var date = new Date(); 
var now_utc =  Date.UTC(date.getUTCFullYear(), date.getUTCMonth(), date.getUTCDate(),
 date.getUTCHours(), date.getUTCMinutes(), date.getUTCSeconds());

 return new Date(now_utc);

Answer 4

This function works beautifully for me.

function ParseDateForSave(dateValue) {
    // create a new date object
    var newDate = new Date(parseInt(dateValue.substr(6)));

    // return the UTC version of the date
    return newDate.toISOString();
}

Answer 5

var userdate = new Date("2009-1-1T8:00:00Z");
var timezone = userdate.getTimezoneOffset();
var serverdate = new Date(userdate.setMinutes(userdate.getMinutes()+parseInt(timezone)));

This will give you the proper UTC Date and Time.
It's because the getTimezoneOffset() will give you the timezone difference in minutes. I recommend you that not to use toISOString() because the output will be in the string Hence in future you will not able to manipulate the date

Answer 6

If you are dealing with dates a lot, it's worth using moment.js (http://momentjs.com). The method to convert to UTC would be:

moment(yourTime).utc()

You can use format to change your date to any format you want:

moment(yourTime).utc().format("YYYY-MM-DD")

There is offset options in moment as well but there is an additional complementary library for dealing with timezone (http://momentjs.com/timezone/). The time conversion would be as simple as this:

moment.tz(yourUTCTime, "America/New_York")