How to Get Current Date & Time in JavaScript

Questions: How do I check the current date and time in JavaScript? What’s the way to format the date as YYYY-MM-DD in JavaScript? How can I display the time as H:i:s in JavaScript?

Knowing the current date and time is essential in many aspects of daily life, and JavaScript can help you with this. The Date object in JavaScript allows you to access the current date and time, but it usually shows the time based on your computer’s settings, not the global standard time. To get more precise timings, you might need to use specific JavaScript tools. Additionally, JavaScript lets you format the date and time in popular formats like YYYY-MM-DD for date and HH:MM:SS for time.

This guide will simplify how you can get and format the current date and time in JavaScript using clear examples.

Getting Current Date & Time in JavaScript

Use the Date() function to create an object in JavaScript with the current date and time. This provides output in the UTC timezone.

var today = new Date();   

1. Current Date in JavaScript

Use the following script to get the current date using JavaScript in “Y-m-d” format.

var today = new Date();
var date = today.getFullYear()+'-'+(today.getMonth()+1)+'-'+today.getDate();

• getFullYear() – Provides current year like 2022.
• getMonth() – Provides current month values 0-11. Where 0 for Jan and 11 for Dec. So added +1 to get the result.
• getDate() – Provides day of the month values 1-31.

2. Current Time in JavaScript

Use the following script to get the current time using JavaScript in “H:i:s” format.

var today = new Date();
var time = today.getHours() + ":" + today.getMinutes() + ":" + today.getSeconds();

• getHours() – Provides current hour between 0-23.
• getMinutes() – Provides current minutes between 0-59.
• getSeconds() – Provides current seconds between 0-59.

3. Current Date & Time Both in JavaScript

Use the following script to get the current date and time using JavaScript in the “Y-m-d H:i:s” format. You can simply combine the output of the above JavaScript code in one variable as below:

var today = new Date();
var date = today.getFullYear()+'-'+(today.getMonth()+1)+'-'+today.getDate();
var time = today.getHours() + ":" + today.getMinutes() + ":" + today.getSeconds();
var dateTime = date+' '+time;

console.log(dateTime)

Output
2024-4-18 9:24:46

Conclusion

By following the examples above, you can easily retrieve and format the current date and time in JavaScript. This allows you to use these timestamps effectively in your projects or daily tasks, ensuring that you have precise control over how dates and times are presented and utilized in your scripts.