[javascript] Why does Date.parse give incorrect results?

Case One:

new Date(Date.parse("Jul 8, 2005"));

Output:

Fri Jul 08 2005 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (PST)

Case Two:

new Date(Date.parse("2005-07-08"));

Output:

Thu Jul 07 2005 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (PST)

Why is the second parse incorrect?

During recent experience writing a JS interpreter I wrestled plenty with the inner workings of ECMA/JS dates. So, I figure I'll throw in my 2 cents here. Hopefully sharing this stuff will help others with any questions about the differences among browsers in how they handle dates.

The Input Side

All implementations store their date values internally as 64-bit numbers that represent the number of milliseconds (ms) since 1970-01-01 UTC (GMT is the same thing as UTC). This date is the ECMAScript epoch that is also used by other languages such as Java and POSIX systems such as UNIX. Dates occurring after the epoch are positive numbers and dates prior are negative.

The following code is interpreted as the same date in all current browsers, but with the local timezone offset:

Date.parse('1/1/1970'); // 1 January, 1970

In my timezone (EST, which is -05:00), the result is 18000000 because that's how many ms are in 5 hours (it's only 4 hours during daylight savings months). The value will be different in different time zones. This behaviour is specified in ECMA-262 so all browsers do it the same way.

While there is some variance in the input string formats that the major browsers will parse as dates, they essentially interpret them the same as far as time zones and daylight saving is concerned even though parsing is largely implementation dependent.

However, the ISO 8601 format is different. It's one of only two formats outlined in ECMAScript 2015 (ed 6) specifically that must be parsed the same way by all implementations (the other is the format specified for Date.prototype.toString).

But, even for ISO 8601 format strings, some implementations get it wrong. Here is a comparison output of Chrome and Firefox when this answer was originally written for 1/1/1970 (the epoch) on my machine using ISO 8601 format strings that should be parsed to exactly the same value in all implementations:

Date.parse('1970-01-01T00:00:00Z');       // Chrome: 0         FF: 0
Date.parse('1970-01-01T00:00:00-0500');   // Chrome: 18000000  FF: 18000000
Date.parse('1970-01-01T00:00:00');        // Chrome: 0         FF: 18000000

• In the first case, the "Z" specifier indicates that the input is in UTC time so is not offset from the epoch and the result is 0
• In the second case, the "-0500" specifier indicates that the input is in GMT-05:00 and both browsers interpret the input as being in the -05:00 timezone. That means that the UTC value is offset from the epoch, which means adding 18000000ms to the date's internal time value.
• The third case, where there is no specifier, should be treated as local for the host system. FF correctly treats the input as local time while Chrome treats it as UTC, so producing different time values. For me this creates a 5 hour difference in the stored value, which is problematic. Other systems with different offsets will get different results.

This difference has been fixed as of 2020, but other quirks exist between browsers when parsing ISO 8601 format strings.

But it gets worse. A quirk of ECMA-262 is that the ISO 8601 date–only format (YYYY-MM-DD) is required to be parsed as UTC, whereas ISO 8601 requires it to be parsed as local. Here is the output from FF with the long and short ISO date formats with no time zone specifier.

Date.parse('1970-01-01T00:00:00');       // 18000000
Date.parse('1970-01-01');                // 0

So the first is parsed as local because it's ISO 8601 date and time with no timezone, and the second is parsed as UTC because it's ISO 8601 date only.

So, to answer the original question directly, "YYYY-MM-DD" is required by ECMA-262 to be interpreted as UTC, while the other is interpreted as local. That's why:

This doesn't produce equivalent results:

console.log(new Date(Date.parse("Jul 8, 2005")).toString()); // Local
console.log(new Date(Date.parse("2005-07-08")).toString());  // UTC

This does:

console.log(new Date(Date.parse("Jul 8, 2005")).toString());
console.log(new Date(Date.parse("2005-07-08T00:00:00")).toString());

The bottom line is this for parsing date strings. The ONLY ISO 8601 string that you can safely parse across browsers is the long form with an offset (either ±HH:mm or "Z"). If you do that you can safely go back and forth between local and UTC time.

This works across browsers (after IE9):

console.log(new Date(Date.parse("2005-07-08T00:00:00Z")).toString());

Most current browsers do treat the other input formats equally, including the frequently used '1/1/1970' (M/D/YYYY) and '1/1/1970 00:00:00 AM' (M/D/YYYY hh:mm:ss ap) formats. All of the following formats (except the last) are treated as local time input in all browsers. The output of this code is the same in all browsers in my timezone. The last one is treated as -05:00 regardless of the host timezone because the offset is set in the timestamp:

console.log(Date.parse("1/1/1970"));
console.log(Date.parse("1/1/1970 12:00:00 AM"));
console.log(Date.parse("Thu Jan 01 1970"));
console.log(Date.parse("Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:00"));
console.log(Date.parse("Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:00 GMT-0500"));

However, since parsing of even the formats specified in ECMA-262 is not consistent, it is recommended to never rely on the built–in parser and to always manually parse strings, say using a library and provide the format to the parser.

E.g. in moment.js you might write:

let m = moment('1/1/1970', 'M/D/YYYY'); 

The Output Side

On the output side, all browsers translate time zones the same way but they handle the string formats differently. Here are the toString functions and what they output. Notice the toUTCString and toISOString functions output 5:00 AM on my machine. Also, the timezone name may be an abbreviation and may be different in different implementations.

Converts from UTC to Local time before printing

 - toString
 - toDateString
 - toTimeString
 - toLocaleString
 - toLocaleDateString
 - toLocaleTimeString

Prints the stored UTC time directly

 - toUTCString
 - toISOString 

In Chrome

toString            Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:00 GMT-05:00 (Eastern Standard Time)
toDateString        Thu Jan 01 1970
toTimeString        00:00:00 GMT-05:00 (Eastern Standard Time)
toLocaleString      1/1/1970 12:00:00 AM
toLocaleDateString  1/1/1970
toLocaleTimeString  00:00:00 AM

toUTCString         Thu, 01 Jan 1970 05:00:00 GMT
toISOString         1970-01-01T05:00:00.000Z

In Firefox

toString            Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:00 GMT-05:00 (Eastern Standard Time)
toDateString        Thu Jan 01 1970
toTimeString        00:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
toLocaleString      Thursday, January 01, 1970 12:00:00 AM
toLocaleDateString  Thursday, January 01, 1970
toLocaleTimeString  12:00:00 AM

toUTCString         Thu, 01 Jan 1970 05:00:00 GMT
toISOString         1970-01-01T05:00:00.000Z

I normally don't use the ISO format for string input. The only time that using that format is beneficial to me is when dates need to be sorted as strings. The ISO format is sortable as-is while the others are not. If you have to have cross-browser compatibility, either specify the timezone or use a compatible string format.

The code new Date('12/4/2013').toString() goes through the following internal pseudo-transformation:

  "12/4/2013" -> toUCT -> [storage] -> toLocal -> print "12/4/2013"

I hope this answer was helpful.

According to http://blog.dygraphs.com/2012/03/javascript-and-dates-what-mess.html the format "yyyy/mm/dd" solves the usual problems. He says: "Stick to "YYYY/MM/DD" for your date strings whenever possible. It's universally supported and unambiguous. With this format, all times are local." I've set tests: http://jsfiddle.net/jlanus/ND2Qg/432/ This format: + avoids the day and month order ambiguity by using y m d ordering and a 4-digit year + avoids the UTC vs. local issue not complying with ISO format by using slashes + danvk, the dygraphs guy, says that this format is good in all browsers.

Here is a short, flexible snippet to convert a datetime-string in a cross-browser-safe fashion as nicel detailed by @drankin2112.

var inputTimestamp = "2014-04-29 13:00:15"; //example

var partsTimestamp = inputTimestamp.split(/[ \/:-]/g);
if(partsTimestamp.length < 6) {
    partsTimestamp = partsTimestamp.concat(['00', '00', '00'].slice(0, 6 - partsTimestamp.length));
}
//if your string-format is something like '7/02/2014'...
//use: var tstring = partsTimestamp.slice(0, 3).reverse().join('-');
var tstring = partsTimestamp.slice(0, 3).join('-');
tstring += 'T' + partsTimestamp.slice(3).join(':') + 'Z'; //configure as needed
var timestamp = Date.parse(tstring);

Your browser should provide the same timestamp result as Date.parse with:

(new Date(tstring)).getTime()

The accepted answer from CMS is correct, I have just added some features :

• trim and clean input spaces
• parse slashes, dashes, colons and spaces
• has default day and time

// parse a date time that can contains spaces, dashes, slashes, colons
function parseDate(input) {
    // trimes and remove multiple spaces and split by expected characters
    var parts = input.trim().replace(/ +(?= )/g,'').split(/[\s-\/:]/)
    // new Date(year, month [, day [, hours[, minutes[, seconds[, ms]]]]])
    return new Date(parts[0], parts[1]-1, parts[2] || 1, parts[3] || 0, parts[4] || 0, parts[5] || 0); // Note: months are 0-based
}

There is some method to the madness. As a general rule, if a browser can interpret a date as an ISO-8601, it will. "2005-07-08" falls into this camp, and so it is parsed as UTC. "Jul 8, 2005" cannot, and so it is parsed in the local time.

See JavaScript and Dates, What a Mess! for more.

While CMS is correct that passing strings into the parse method is generally unsafe, the new ECMA-262 5th Edition (aka ES5) specification in section 15.9.4.2 suggests that Date.parse() actually should handle ISO-formatted dates. The old specification made no such claim. Of course, old browsers and some current browsers still do not provide this ES5 functionality.

Your second example isn't wrong. It is the specified date in UTC, as implied by Date.prototype.toISOString(), but is represented in your local timezone.

Both are correct, but they are being interpreted as dates with two different timezones. So you compared apples and oranges:

// local dates
new Date("Jul 8, 2005").toISOString()            // "2005-07-08T07:00:00.000Z"
new Date("2005-07-08T00:00-07:00").toISOString() // "2005-07-08T07:00:00.000Z"
// UTC dates
new Date("Jul 8, 2005 UTC").toISOString()        // "2005-07-08T00:00:00.000Z"
new Date("2005-07-08").toISOString()             // "2005-07-08T00:00:00.000Z"

I removed the Date.parse() call since it's used automatically on a string argument. I also compared the dates using ISO8601 format so you could visually compare the dates between your local dates and the UTC dates. The times are 7 hours apart, which is the timezone difference and why your tests showed two different dates.

The other way of creating these same local/UTC dates would be:

new Date(2005, 7-1, 8)           // "2005-07-08T07:00:00.000Z"
new Date(Date.UTC(2005, 7-1, 8)) // "2005-07-08T00:00:00.000Z"

But I still strongly recommend Moment.js which is as simple yet powerful:

// parse string
moment("2005-07-08").format()       // "2005-07-08T00:00:00+02:00"
moment.utc("2005-07-08").format()   // "2005-07-08T00:00:00Z"
// year, month, day, etc.
moment([2005, 7-1, 8]).format()     // "2005-07-08T00:00:00+02:00"
moment.utc([2005, 7-1, 8]).format() // "2005-07-08T00:00:00Z"

Use moment.js to parse dates:

var caseOne = moment("Jul 8, 2005", "MMM D, YYYY", true).toDate();
var caseTwo = moment("2005-07-08", "YYYY-MM-DD", true).toDate();

The 3rd argument determines strict parsing (available as of 2.3.0). Without it moment.js may also give incorrect results.

Another solution is to build an associative array with date format and then reformat data.

This method is useful for date formatted in an unussual way.

An example:

    mydate='01.02.12 10:20:43':
    myformat='dd/mm/yy HH:MM:ss';


    dtsplit=mydate.split(/[\/ .:]/);
    dfsplit=myformat.split(/[\/ .:]/);

    // creates assoc array for date
    df = new Array();
    for(dc=0;dc<6;dc++) {
            df[dfsplit[dc]]=dtsplit[dc];
            }

    // uses assc array for standard mysql format
    dstring[r] = '20'+df['yy']+'-'+df['mm']+'-'+df['dd'];
    dstring[r] += ' '+df['HH']+':'+df['MM']+':'+df['ss'];

This light weight date parsing library should solve all similar problems. I like the library because it is quite easy to extend. It's also possible to i18n it (not very straight forward, but not that hard).

Parsing example:

var caseOne = Date.parseDate("Jul 8, 2005", "M d, Y");
var caseTwo = Date.parseDate("2005-07-08", "Y-m-d");

And formatting back to string (you will notice both cases give exactly the same result):

console.log( caseOne.dateFormat("M d, Y") );
console.log( caseTwo.dateFormat("M d, Y") );
console.log( caseOne.dateFormat("Y-m-d") );
console.log( caseTwo.dateFormat("Y-m-d") );