The toDateString()
method returns the date portion of a Date
object in human readable form in American English.
Syntax
dateObj.toDateString()
Return value
A string representing the date portion of the given Date
object in human readable form in American English.
Description
Date
instances refer to a specific point in time. Calling toString()
will return the date formatted in a human readable form in American English. In SpiderMonkey, this consists of the date portion (day, month, and year) followed by the time portion (hours, minutes, seconds, and time zone). Sometimes it is desirable to obtain a string of the date portion; such a thing can be accomplished with the toDateString()
method.
The toDateString()
method is especially useful because compliant engines implementing ECMA-262 may differ in the string obtained from toString()
for Date
objects, as the format is implementation-dependent and simple string slicing approaches may not produce consistent results across multiple engines.
Examples
A basic usage of toDateString()
var d = new Date(1993, 6, 28, 14, 39, 7); console.log(d.toString()); // logs Wed Jul 28 1993 14:39:07 GMT-0600 (PDT) console.log(d.toDateString()); // logs Wed Jul 28 1993
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
ECMAScript 3rd Edition (ECMA-262) | Standard | Initial definition. |
ECMAScript 5.1 (ECMA-262) The definition of 'Date.prototype.toDateString' in that specification. |
Standard | |
ECMAScript 2015 (6th Edition, ECMA-262) The definition of 'Date.prototype.toDateString' in that specification. |
Standard | |
ECMAScript Latest Draft (ECMA-262) The definition of 'Date.prototype.toDateString' in that specification. |
Living Standard |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Feature | Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |
Feature | Android | Chrome for Android | Edge mobile | Firefox for Android | IE mobile | Opera Android | iOS Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |