<input type="datetime-local">

<input> elements of type datetime-local create input fields allowing a date and time to be easily entered — this includes year, month, day, hours, and minutes.

The control's UI varies in general from browser to browser; at the moment support is patchy, with only Chrome/Opera and Edge on desktop — and most modern mobile browser versions — having usable implementations. In other browsers, the control degrades gracefully to a simple <input type="text">.

<input id="datetime" type="datetime-local">

For those of you not using a supporting browser, the Chrome/Opera datetime-local control looks like the below screenshot. Clicking the down arrow on the right hand side brings up a date picker to allow you to choose a date; you have to enter the time manually.

The Edge datetime-local control looks like this however — clicking the date and the time parts of the value bring up two separate pickers for you to make your selection with:

Value

A DOMString representing the value of the date entered into the input. You can set a default value for the input by including a date inside the value attribute, like so:

<label for="party">Enter a date and time for your party booking:</label>
<input id="party" type="datetime-local" name="partydate" value="2017-06-01T08:30">

One thing to note is that the displayed date format differs from the actual value — the displayed date format will be chosen based on the set locale of the user's operating system, whereas the date value is always formatted yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm. When the above value submitted to the server, for example, it will look like partydate=2017-06-01T08:30.

You can also get and set the date value in JavaScript using the HTMLInputElement.value property, for example:

var dateControl = document.querySelector('input[type="datetime-local"]');
date.value = '2017-06-01T08:30';

Using datetime-local inputs

Date/time inputs sound convenient at first glance — they provide an easy UI for choosing dates and times, and they normalize the data format sent to the server, regardless of the user's locale. However, there are issues with <input type="datetime-local"> because of the limited browser support.

We'll look at basic and more complex uses of <input type="datetime-local">, then offer advice on mitigating the browser support issue later on (see Handling browser support).

Basic uses of datetime-local

The simplest use of <input type="datetime-local"> involves a basic <input> and <label> element combination, as seen below:

<form>
    <label for="party">Enter a date and time for your party booking:</label>
    <input id="party" type="datetime-local" name="partydate">
</form>

Setting maximum and minimum dates and times

You can use the min and max attributes to restrict the dates/times that can be chosen by the user. In the following example we are setting a minimum datetime of 2017-06-01T08:30 and a maximum datetime of 2017-06-30T16:30:

  <form>
    <label for="party">Enter a date and time for your party booking:</label>
    <input id="party" type="datetime-local" name="partydate" min="2017-06-01T08:30" max="2017-06-30T16:30">
  </form>

The result here is that:

• Only days in June 2017 can be selected — only the "days" part of the date value will be editable, and dates outside June can't be scrolled to in the datepicker widget.
• Depending on what browser you are using, you might find that times outside the specified values might not be selectable in the time picker (e.g. Edge), or invalid (see Validation) but still available (e.g. Chrome).

Controlling input size

<input type="datetime-local"> doesn't support form sizing attributes such as size. You'll have to resort to CSS for sizing needs.

Setting timezones

One thing the datetime-local input type doesn't provide is a way to set the timezone/locale of the datetime. This was available in the datetime input type, but this type is now obsolete, having been removed from the spec. The main reasons why this was removed are a lack of implementation in browsers, and concerns over the user interface/experience. It is easier to just have a control (or controls) for setting the date/time and then deal with the locale in a separate control.

For example, if you are creating a system where the user is likely to already be logged in, with their locale already set, you could provide the timezone in a hidden input type. For example:

<input type="hidden" id="timezone" name="timezone" value="-08:00">

On the other hand, if you were required to allow the user to enter a timezone along with a datetime entry, you could provide a means of inputting a timezone, such as a <select> element:

<select name="timezone_offset" id="timezone-offset" class="span5">
    <option value="-12:00">(GMT -12:00) Eniwetok, Kwajalein</option>
    <option value="-11:00">(GMT -11:00) Midway Island, Samoa</option>
    <option value="-10:00">(GMT -10:00) Hawaii</option>
    <option value="-09:50">(GMT -9:30) Taiohae</option>
    <option value="-09:00">(GMT -9:00) Alaska</option>
    <option value="-08:00">(GMT -8:00) Pacific Time (US &amp; Canada)</option>
  ...
</select>

In either case, the timedate and timezone values would be submitted to the server as separate data points, and then you'd need to store them appropriately in the database on the server-side.

Validation

By default, <input type="datetime-local"> does not apply any validation to entered values. The UI implementations generally don't let you enter anything that isn't a datetime — which is helpful — but you can still not fill in a datetime and submit, or enter an invalid datetime (e.g. the 32th of April).

You can use min and max to restrict the available dates (see anch("Setting maximum and minimum dates")), and in addition use the required attribute to make filling in the date mandatory. As a result, supporting browsers will display an error if you try to submit a date that is outside the set bounds, or an empty date field.

Let's look at an example — here we've set minimum and maximum datetimes, and also made the field required:

<form>
    <div>
        <label for="party">Choose your preferred party date and time (required, June 1st 8.30am to June 30th 4.30pm):</label>
        <input id="party" type="datetime-local" name="partydate" min="2017-06-01T08:30" max="2017-06-30T16:30" required>
        <span class="validity"></span>
    </div>
    <div>
        <input type="submit" value="Book party!">
    </div>
</form>

If you try to submit the form with an incomplete date (or with a date outside the set bounds), the browser displays an error. Try playing with the example now:

Here's'a screenshot for those of you who aren't using a supporting browser:

Here's the CSS used in the above example. Here we make use of the :valid and :invalid CSS properties to style the input based on whether or not the current value is valid. We had to put the icons on a <span> next to the input, not on the input itself, because in Chrome the generated content is placed inside the form control, and can't be styled or shown effectively.

div {
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    display: flex;
    align-items: center;
}
label {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 300px;
}
input:invalid+span:after {
    content: '✖';
    padding-left: 5px;
}
input:valid+span:after {
    content: '✓';
    padding-left: 5px;
}

Handling browser support

As mentioned above, the major problem with using date inputs at the time of writing is browser support — only Chrome/Opera and Edge support it on desktop, and most modern browsers on mobile. As an example, the datetime-local picker on Firefox for Android looks like this:

Non-supporting browsers gracefully degrade to a text input, but this creates problems both in terms of consistency of user interface (the presented control will be different), and data handling.

The second problem is the most serious — as we mentioned earlier, with a datetime-local input the actual value is always normalized to the format yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm. With a text input on the other hand, by default the browser has no recognition of what format the date should be in, and there are lots of different ways in which people write dates and times, for example:

• ddmmyyyy
• dd/mm/yyyy
• mm/dd/yyyy
• dd-mm-yyyy
• mm-dd-yyyy
• mm-dd-yyyy hh:mm (12 hour clock)
• mm-dd-yyyy hh:mm (24 hour clock)
• etc.

One way around this is to put a pattern attribute on your datetime-local input. Even though the datetime-local input doesn't use it, the text input fallback will. For example, try viewing the following demo in a non-supporting browser:

<form>
  <div>
    <label for="party">Choose your preferred party date and time (required, June 1st 8.30am to June 30th 4.30pm):</label>
    <input id="party" type="datetime-local" name="partydate"
           min="2017-06-01T08:30" max="2017-06-30T16:30"
           pattern="[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}T[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}" required>
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <div>
    <input type="submit" value="Book party!">
  </div>
  <input type="hidden" id="timezone" name="timezone" value="-08:00">
</form>

If you try submitting it, you'll see that the browser now displays an error message (and highlights the input as invalid) if your entry doesn't match the pattern nnnn-nn-nnTnn:nn, where n is a number from 0 to 9. Of course, this doesn't stop people from entering invalid dates, or incorrectly formatted dates and times.

And what user is going to understand the pattern they need to enter the time and date in?

We still have a problem.

div {
  margin-bottom: 10px;
}
input:invalid + span {
  position: relative;
}
input:invalid + span:after {
  content: '✖';
  position: absolute;
  right: -18px;
}
input:valid + span {
  position: relative;
}
input:valid + span:after {
  content: '✓';
  position: absolute;
  right: -18px;
}

The best way to deal with dates in forms in a cross-browser way at the moment is to get the user to enter the day, month, year, and time in separate controls (<select> elements being popular — see below for an implementation), or use JavaScript libraries such as jQuery date picker, and the jQuery timepicker plugin.

Examples

In this example we create two sets of UI elements for choosing datetimes — a native <input type="datetime-local"> picker, and a set of five <select> elements for choosing dates and times in older browsers that don't support the native input.

The HTML looks like so:

<form>
  <div class="nativeDateTimePicker">
    <label for="party">Choose a date and time for your party:</label>
    <input type="datetime-local" id="party" name="bday">
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <p class="fallbackLabel">Choose a date and time for your party:</p>
  <div class="fallbackDateTimePicker">
    <div>
      <span>
        <label for="day">Day:</label>
        <select id="day" name="day">
        </select>
      </span>
      <span>
        <label for="month">Month:</label>
        <select id="month" name="month">
          <option selected>January</option>
          <option>February</option>
          <option>March</option>
          <option>April</option>
          <option>May</option>
          <option>June</option>
          <option>July</option>
          <option>August</option>
          <option>September</option>
          <option>October</option>
          <option>November</option>
          <option>December</option>
        </select>
      </span>
      <span>
        <label for="year">Year:</label>
        <select id="year" name="year">
        </select>
      </span>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span>
        <label for="hour">Hour:</label>
        <select id="hour" name="hour">
        </select>
      </span>
      <span>
        <label for="minute">Minute:</label>
        <select id="minute" name="minute">
        </select>
      </span>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

The months are hardcoded (as they are always the same), while the day and year values are dynamically generated depending on the currently selected month and year, and the current year (see the code comments below for detailed explanations of how these functions work.) We also decided to dynamically generate the hours and months, as there are so many of them!

div {
  margin-bottom: 10px;
}
input:invalid+span:after {
  content: '✖';
  padding-left: 5px;
}
input:valid+span:after {
  content: '✓';
  padding-left: 5px;
}

The other part of the code that may be of interest is the feature detection code — to detect whether the browser supports <input type="date">, we create a new <input> element, set its type to date, then immediately check what its type is set to — non-supporting browsers will return text, because the date type falls back to type text. If <input type="date"> is not supported, we hide the native picker and show the fallback picker UI (<select>) instead.

// define variables
var nativePicker = document.querySelector('.nativeDateTimePicker');
var fallbackPicker = document.querySelector('.fallbackDateTimePicker');
var fallbackLabel = document.querySelector('.fallbackLabel');
var yearSelect = document.querySelector('#year');
var monthSelect = document.querySelector('#month');
var daySelect = document.querySelector('#day');
var hourSelect = document.querySelector('#hour');
var minuteSelect = document.querySelector('#minute');
// hide fallback initially
fallbackPicker.style.display = 'none';
fallbackLabel.style.display = 'none';
// test whether a new date input falls back to a text input or not
var test = document.createElement('input');
test.type = 'date';
// if it does, run the code inside the if() {} block
if(test.type === 'text') {
  // hide the native picker and show the fallback
  nativePicker.style.display = 'none';
  fallbackPicker.style.display = 'block';
  fallbackLabel.style.display = 'block';
  // populate the days and years dynamically
  // (the months are always the same, therefore hardcoded)
  populateDays(monthSelect.value);
  populateYears();
  populateHours();
  populateMinutes();
}
function populateDays(month) {
  // delete the current set of <option> elements out of the
  // day <select>, ready for the next set to be injected
  while(daySelect.firstChild){
    daySelect.removeChild(daySelect.firstChild);
  }
  // Create variable to hold new number of days to inject
  var dayNum;
  // 31 or 30 days?
  if(month === 'January' | month === 'March' | month === 'May' | month === 'July' | month === 'August' | month === 'October' | month === 'December') {
    dayNum = 31;
  } else if(month === 'April' | month === 'June' | month === 'September' | month === 'November') {
    dayNum = 30;
  } else {
  // If month is February, calculate whether it is a leap year or not
    var year = yearSelect.value;
    (year - 2016) % 4 === 0 ? dayNum = 29 : dayNum = 28;
  }
  // inject the right number of new <option> elements into the day <select>
  for(i = 1; i <= dayNum; i++) {
    var option = document.createElement('option');
    option.textContent = i;
    daySelect.appendChild(option);
  }
  // if previous day has already been set, set daySelect's value
  // to that day, to avoid the day jumping back to 1 when you
  // change the year
  if(previousDay) {
    daySelect.value = previousDay;
    // If the previous day was set to a high number, say 31, and then
    // you chose a month with less total days in it (e.g. February),
    // this part of the code ensures that the highest day available
    // is selected, rather than showing a blank daySelect
    if(daySelect.value === "") {
      daySelect.value = previousDay - 1;
    }
    if(daySelect.value === "") {
      daySelect.value = previousDay - 2;
    }
    if(daySelect.value === "") {
      daySelect.value = previousDay - 3;
    }
  }
}
function populateYears() {
  // get this year as a number
  var date = new Date();
  var year = date.getFullYear();
  // Make this year, and the 100 years before it available in the year <select>
  for(var i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {
    var option = document.createElement('option');
    option.textContent = year-i;
    yearSelect.appendChild(option);
  }
}
function populateHours() {
  // populate the hours <select> with the 24 hours of the day
  for(var i = 0; i <= 23; i++) {
    var option = document.createElement('option');
    option.textContent = (i < 10) ? ("0" + i) : i;
    hourSelect.appendChild(option);
  }
}
function populateMinutes() {
  // populate the minutes <select> with the 60 hours of each minute
  for(var i = 0; i <= 59; i++) {
    var option = document.createElement('option');
    option.textContent = (i < 10) ? ("0" + i) : i;
    minuteSelect.appendChild(option);
  }
}
// when the month or year <select> values are changed, rerun populateDays()
// in case the change affected the number of available days
yearSelect.onchange = function() {
  populateDays(monthSelect.value);
}
monthSelect.onchange = function() {
  populateDays(monthSelect.value);
}
//preserve day selection
var previousDay;
// update what day has been set to previously
// see end of populateDays() for usage
daySelect.onchange = function() {
  previousDay = daySelect.value;
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

[1] This feature is not implemented yet. See bug 888320 and TPE DOM/Date time input types.

[2] It is recognized but there is no UI.

See also

• The generic <input> element and the interface used to manipulate it, HTMLInputElement
• Date and Time picker tutorial