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How do I get the Current Date in JavaScript?

Matthew C.

The Problem

You want to get the current date in JavaScript, for example, to add a date stamp to your blog post or to blog post comments. How do you get the current date in JavaScript?

The Solution

Create a timestamp using the Date.now() method. This represents the number of milliseconds elapsed since 1 January 1970 00:00:00 UTC (ECMAScript epoch), with leap seconds ignored:

const currentTime = Date.now();
console.log(currentTime); // 1669634159760

For example, you can create and save the timestamp when a blog post or comment is added to your database. When you want to display the date, you can convert the timestamp to a date and format it as needed. The .toString() method on the Date object returns a string representation of the date and time in the user’s timezone:

const dateToShow = new Date(currentTime);
console.log(dateToShow.toString()); // Mon Nov 28 2022 13:15:59 GMT+0200 (South Africa Standard Time)

You can also create a new Date object, which represents a single moment in time, and save the date as a UTC timezone timestamp:

const currentTime = new Date();
console.log(currentTime.toUTCString()); // Mon, 28 Nov 2022 11:24:21 GMT

You can then convert the timestamp to a date and format it as needed:

const dateToShow = new Date(currentTime);
console.log(dateToShow.toString()); // Mon Nov 28 2022 13:24:21 GMT+0200 (South Africa Standard Time)

You can format the date using one of the various formatting methods on the Date object, such as .toString(), as described in our answer to the following question: How do I Format a Date in JavaScript?.

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