Convert iso timestamp to date format with Javascript?

Question

This seems like a pretty simple question but I can't seem to get an answer for it. How can I convert an iso timestamp to display the date/time using JavaScript?

Example timestamp: 2012-04-15T18:06:08-07:00

Any help is appreciated, Google is failing me. Thank you.

Solution 1

Pass it to the Date constructor.

> var date = new Date('2012-04-15T18:06:08-07:00')
> date
  Mon Apr 16 2012 04:06:08 GMT+0300 (EEST)

For more information about Date, check https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date.

Solution 2

The newest version of javascript (v1.85 or higher in some of the latest browsers) can handle the ISO dates directly so you can just pass your string directly to the Date() constructor like this:

var jsDate = new Date("2012-04-15T18:06:08-07:00");

But older browsers (any version of IE before IE9, any version of Firefox before 4, etc...) do not support this. For those browsers, you can either get a library that can do this for you like datejs or parse it yourself like this:

var t = "2012-04-15T18:06:08-07:00";

function convertDate(t) {
    var dateRE = /(\d+)-(\d+)-(\d+)T(\d+):(\d+):(\d+)([+\-]\d+):(\d+)/;
    var match = t.match(dateRE);
    var nums = [], item, date;
    if (match) {
        for (var i = 1; i < match.length; i++) {
            nums.push(parseInt(match[i], 10));
        }
        if (nums[7] < 0) {
            nums[8] *= -1;
        }
        return(new Date(nums[0], nums[1] - 1, nums[2], nums[3] - nums[6], nums[4] - nums[7], nums[5]));
    }
}

var jsDate = convertDate(t);

Working demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/QSgn6/

Comments

[Ian]

Well that was significantly easier than I thought it was... thanks

[jfriend00]

This does not appear to work in any version of IE before IE9 or versions of Firefox before Firefox 4.

[eagleflo]

Indeed, parsing ISO dates is part of supporting EcmaScript 5. If you need to work with older browsers you're better off using something like the code below.