Borislav Hadzhiev
Last updated: Oct 23, 2021
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To change the getSeconds()
method to 2 digit format:
getSeconds()
to a string.padStart()
method to add a leading zero if it's necessary.padStart
method allows us to add a leading zero to the start of the
string.const date = new Date('March 14, 2025 05:24:07'); const seconds = String(date.getSeconds()).padStart(2, '0'); console.log(seconds); // 👉️ 07
The padStart method has to be used on a string, so the first step is to convert the number of seconds to a string.
We passed the following 2 parameters to the padStart
method:
padStart
method should
return, once it has been padded.0
.We know that the seconds should always have a length of 2
, so that's what we
set as a target length.
padStart
method would not add an additional leading zero because we've set the target length
to 2
.const date = new Date('March 14, 2025 13:24:22'); const seconds = String(date.getSeconds()).padStart(2, '0'); console.log(seconds); // 👉️ 22
The seconds were set to 22
(2 digits), so the padStart
method didn't add a
leading zero.
padStart
method is not supported in Internet Explorer. If you have to support the browser, use the next approach covered in this article.To change the getSeconds()
method to a 2 digit format, check if the seconds
are less than or equal to 9
, if they are, add a leading zero to the seconds
using the addition (+) operator, if they aren't there is no need to add a
leading zero.
const date = new Date('September 24, 2025 05:24:06'); let seconds = date.getSeconds(); seconds = seconds <= 9 ? '0' + seconds : seconds; console.log(seconds); // 👉️ 06
We used a ternary operator, which is very similar to an if/else statement.
If the seconds are 9
or less, we add a leading zero, otherwise we return the
seconds as is.