How to convert a String to a Date object in JavaScript

# Convert a String to a Date object in JavaScript

Use the Date() constructor to convert a string to a Date object.

The Date() constructor takes a valid date string as a parameter and returns a Date object.

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const str = '2022-09-24';

const date = new Date(str);
console.log(date); // 👉️ 2022-09-24T00:00:00.000Z

console.log(date.toDateString()); // 👉️ Sat Sep 24 2022

We used the Date() constructor to convert a string to a Date object.

# Dealing with Invalid Dates

If you get an invalid Date when creating the Date object, you need to format the string correctly before passing it to the Date() constructor.

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const date1 = new Date('abc');
console.log(date1); // 👉️ Invalid Date

const date2 = new Date('2023-12-45');
console.log(date2); // 👉️ Invalid Date

If you have difficulties creating a valid Date object, you can pass 2 types of arguments to the Date() constructor:

1. a valid ISO 8601 string, formatted as YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ, or just YYYY-MM-DD, if you only have a date without time.
2. multiple, comma-separated arguments that represent the year, month (0 = January to 11 = December), day of the month, hours, minutes and seconds.

# Splitting a Date string to create a valid Date

Here is an example that splits an MM/DD/YYYY formatted string (could be any other format) and passes the values as arguments to the Date() constructor to create a Date object.

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// 👇️ (MM/DD/YYYY)
const str = '09/24/2022';

const [month, day, year] = str.split('/');

console.log(month); // 👉️ 09
console.log(day); // 👉️ 24
console.log(year); // 👉️ 2022

const date = new Date(+year, +month - 1, +day);
console.log(date); // 👉️ Sat Sep 24 2022

We split the date on each forward slash to get the values of the month, day and year.

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const str = '09/24/2022';

// 👇️ [ '09', '24', '2022' ]
console.log(str.split('/'));

Notice that we subtracted 1 from the month when passing it to the Date() constructor.

# Splitting a Date and Time string to create a valid Date

Here is another example, which creates a Date that also contains the hours, minutes and seconds.

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const str = '09/24/2022 07:30:14';

const [dateValues, timeValues] = str.split(' ');
console.log(dateValues); // 👉️ "09/24/2022"
console.log(timeValues); // 👉️ "07:30:14"

const [month, day, year] = dateValues.split('/');
const [hours, minutes, seconds] = timeValues.split(':');

const date = new Date(
  +year,
  +month - 1,
  +day,
  +hours,
  +minutes,
  +seconds,
);

//  👇️️ Sat Sep 24 2022 07:30:14
console.log(date);

We first split the date and time string on the space, so we can get the date and time components as separate strings.

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const str = '09/24/2022 07:30:14';

const [dateValues, timeValues] = str.split(' ');
console.log(dateValues); // 👉️ "09/24/2022"
console.log(timeValues); // 👉️ "07:30:14"

We then had to split the date string on each forward slash to get the value for the month, day and year.

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const dateValues = '09/24/2022';
console.log(dateValues.split('/')); // 👉️ [ '09', '24', '2022' ]

Note that your separator might be different, e.g. a hyphen, but the approach is the same.

We also split the time string on each colon and assigned the hours, minutes and seconds to variables.

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const timeValues = '07:30:14';
console.log(timeValues.split(':')); // 👉️ [ '07', '30', '14' ]

We then passed all of the values to the Date() constructor to create a Date object.

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const date = new Date(+year, +month - 1, +day, +hours, +minutes, +seconds);

# Getting an ISO-formatted date

You can get the ISO formatted date by calling the toISOString() method.

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const str = '09/24/2022 07:30:14';

const [dateValues, timeValues] = str.split(' ');
console.log(dateValues); // 👉️ "09/24/2022"
console.log(timeValues); // 👉️ "07:30:14"

const [month, day, year] = dateValues.split('/');
const [hours, minutes, seconds] = timeValues.split(':');

const date = new Date(
  +year,
  month - 1,
  +day,
  +hours,
  +minutes,
  +seconds,
);

//  👇️️ Sat Sep 24 2022 07:30:14
console.log(date);

// 👇️ "2022-09-24T04:30:14.000Z" (ISO 8601)
console.log(date.toISOString());

The toISOString() method returns a string of the date in the ISO 8601 format according to universal time.

The ISO string can easily be passed to the Date() constructor to create a new Date object.

# Convert a String to a Date using date-fns

You can also use the date-fns module to convert a string to a Date.

First, make sure you have the module installed by running the following command from the root directory of your project.

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# 👇️ with NPM
npm install date-fns

# 👇️ with YARN
yarn add date-fns

Now you can import and use the parse() function from the date-fns module.

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import {parse} from 'date-fns';

const str = '12/21/2024 06:34:59';

const date = parse(str, 'MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss', new Date());

console.log(date); // 👉️ 2024-12-21T06:34:59.000Z

The code sample assumes that you have a Date string formatted as MM/DD/yyyy hh:mm:ss.

The parse function takes a date or date and time string and converts the string to a Date object.

You can view the accepted format string patterns in this table in the docs.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

• Convert a Date or Date String to Timestamp in JavaScript
• Convert a Date to another Time Zone using JavaScript
• Convert a Full Date to a Short Date in JavaScript
• Convert an ISO Date to a Timestamp using JavaScript
• Convert an ISO string to a Date object in JavaScript
• Convert Milliseconds to a Date using JavaScript