Can't convert dutch month oktober text date to new date

Question

I'm trying to convert text from a div on a website to a date variable, to be able to sort the divs on date descending.

However I'm having issues with the month october:

datetest = new Date("10 oktober 2020");

What am I doing wrong?

All other months work, except oktober.

I guess it just looks at enough chars to be unique. but that would rule out Mei — mplungjan, Jul 08 '20 at 12:06
See [*Why does Date.parse give incorrect results?*](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2587345/why-does-date-parse-give-incorrect-results) — RobG, Jul 08 '20 at 20:14

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 08 '20 at 12:09

Using moment

// Change the locale globally
moment.locale("nl");

console.log(moment("10 oktober 2020", "DD MMM YYYY"))

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.27.0/moment-with-locales.min.js" integrity="sha512-qSnlnyh7EcD3vTqRoSP4LYsy2yVuqqmnkM9tW4dWo6xvAoxuVXyM36qZK54fyCmHoY1iKi9FJAUZrlPqmGNXFw==" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

mplungjan · Answer 2 · 2020-07-08T12:21:08.890

2

So the months in Dutch have the first 3 chars in common with English except

mei and oktober which will fail.

You can use a lookup table:

const months = {
  "jan": "Jan",
  "feb": "Feb",
  "mar": "Mar",
  "apr": "Apr",
  "mei": "May",
  "jun": "Jun",
  "jul": "Jul",
  "aug": "Aug",
  "sep": "Sep",
  "okt": "Oct",
  "nov": "Nov",
  "dec": "Dec"
}

console.log(new Date(`1 ${months["mei"]} 2020`))

console.log(new Date(`1 ${months["oktober".slice(0,3)]} 2020`))

edited Jul 08 '20 at 12:21

answered Jul 08 '20 at 12:12

mplungjan

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The answer below using moment or luxon is more generally applicable (what if you wanted whole month names, what if you had another language/locale). – Jul 08 '20 at 12:19
@mrblewog Sure. But not applicable if not. You can add a substring if you want - see update – mplungjan Jul 08 '20 at 12:20

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 08 '20 at 12:11

0

You have to provide the month string in english. It can be abbreviated to 3 characters. E.g. "October" -> "Oct" will work, which is probably why some of the months in dutch worked if they share the first 3 characters with english months.

answered Jul 08 '20 at 12:11

triihim

62
4

Can't convert dutch month oktober text date to new date

3 Answers3