Format a date in Javascript without converting to local timezone

Question

In an SQL database I have a list of times from different time zones but I neither have nor care for the corresponding time zone information:

2012-01-01 01:02:03
2012-07-01 04:05:06

For outputting I'd like to format them using Javascript. I tried:

var text = input.replace(' ','T'); // SQL -> ISO8601
var d = new Date(Date.parse(text));
hours = d.getHours();

The problem is that in Chrome the the date is interpreted as being in UTC and converted to my local time zone, so I get:

2
6

while in Firefox it's interpreted as local time and I get what I want:

1
4

So is there a better solution with the Date object or am I stuck with splitting the string?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited May 28 '13 at 07:15

6

The only solution I found is replacing - with /:

input = "2012-01-01 01:02:03";
var text = input.replace('-', '/');
var d = new Date(Date.parse(text));
hours = d.getHours();

In my case the input was 2013-05-22T16:45:00Z so I replaced T and Z as well:

input = "2013-05-22T16:45:00Z";
var text = input.replace(/[TZ]/, '').replace('-', '/');
var d = new Date(Date.parse(text));
hours = d.getHours();

That way Javascript deals with it without knowing anything about timezone and stop acting smartly.

edited May 28 '13 at 07:15

AndreKR

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answered May 21 '13 at 07:47

Bishoy Hanna

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So in other cases with timezones, just remove it manually or by Regex – Bishoy Hanna May 21 '13 at 07:55
like here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6348431/best-way-to-remove-edt-from-a-date-returned-via-javascript-with-tolocalestring – Bishoy Hanna May 21 '13 at 07:56
In Firefox `Date.parse("2013-05-22 16:45:00")` gives NaN. – AndreKR May 21 '13 at 15:09
2

replace the '-' with '/' using replace all command `myDate = myDate.replace(/-/g,'/');` – Bishoy Hanna May 28 '13 at 04:00
This seems to do the trick. I rephrased your answer and made it the accepted answer. – AndreKR May 28 '13 at 07:17
Thank you :) hope it was really useful and solved your problem. would vote me up as well :) i'm trying to have some credit here – Bishoy Hanna Jun 04 '13 at 01:30

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 15:19

0

I think that to do with Dates you will need to use some Date "framework" like Globalize jQuery plugin or Datejs to get cross-browser behavior. Doing this, you will be able to configure a pattern to be used in the date parsing.

answered Aug 22 '12 at 15:19

davidbuzatto

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Format a date in Javascript without converting to local timezone

2 Answers2