How do I output an ISO 8601 formatted string in Ja

Question

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

<abbr title="2010-04-02T14:12:07">A couple days ago</abbr>

I have the "relative time in words" portion from another library.

I've tried the following:

function isoDate(msSinceEpoch) {

   var d = new Date(msSinceEpoch);
   return d.getUTCFullYear() + '-' + (d.getUTCMonth() + 1) + '-' + d.getUTCDate() + 'T' +
          d.getUTCHours() + ':' + d.getUTCMinutes() + ':' + d.getUTCSeconds();

}

But that gives me:

"2010-4-2T3:19"

Answer 1

The question asked was ISO format with reduced precision. Voila:

 new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 19) + 'Z'
 // '2014-10-23T13:18:06Z'

Assuming the trailing Z is wanted, otherwise just omit.

Answer 2

Almost every to-ISO method on the web drops the timezone information by applying a convert to "Z"ulu time (UTC) before outputting the string. Browser's native .toISOString() also drops timezone information.

This discards valuable information, as the server, or recipient, can always convert a full ISO date to Zulu time or whichever timezone it requires, while still getting the timezone information of the sender.

The best solution I've come across is to use the Moment.js javascript library and use the following code:

To get the current ISO time with timezone information and milliseconds

now = moment().format("YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.SSSZZ")
// "2013-03-08T20:11:11.234+0100"

now = moment().utc().format("YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.SSSZZ")
// "2013-03-08T19:11:11.234+0000"

now = moment().utc().format("YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss") + "Z"
// "2013-03-08T19:11:11Z" <- better use the native .toISOString() 

To get the ISO time of a native JavaScript Date object with timezone information but without milliseconds

var current_time = Date.now();
moment(current_time).format("YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZZ")

This can be combined with Date.js to get functions like Date.today() whose result can then be passed to moment.

A date string formatted like this is JSON compilant, and lends itself well to get stored into a database. Python and C# seem to like it.

Answer 3

I was able to get below output with very less code.

var ps = new Date('2010-04-02T14:12:07')  ;
ps = ps.toDateString() + " " + ps.getHours() + ":"+ ps.getMinutes() + " hrs";

Output:

Fri Apr 02 2010 19:42 hrs

Answer 4

function timeStr(d) { 
  return ''+
    d.getFullYear()+
    ('0'+(d.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2)+
    ('0'+d.getDate()).slice(-2)+
    ('0'+d.getHours()).slice(-2)+
    ('0'+d.getMinutes()).slice(-2)+
    ('0'+d.getSeconds()).slice(-2);
}

Answer 5

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 6

There is a '+' missing after the 'T'

isoDate: function(msSinceEpoch) {
  var d = new Date(msSinceEpoch);
  return d.getUTCFullYear() + '-' + (d.getUTCMonth() + 1) + '-' + d.getUTCDate() + 'T'
         + d.getUTCHours() + ':' + d.getUTCMinutes() + ':' + d.getUTCSeconds();
}

should do it.

For the leading zeros you could use this from here:

function PadDigits(n, totalDigits) 
{ 
    n = n.toString(); 
    var pd = ''; 
    if (totalDigits > n.length) 
    { 
        for (i=0; i < (totalDigits-n.length); i++) 
        { 
            pd += '0'; 
        } 
    } 
    return pd + n.toString(); 
} 

Using it like this:

PadDigits(d.getUTCHours(),2)