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?
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?.