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  3. Convert a Date to UTC in JavaScript or Node.js

Convert a Date to UTC in JavaScript or Node.js

Working with dates in an application requires you to think of time zones. Users are going to access your application from different time zones. They expect displayed dates to either match their personal timezone or to contain the timezone information, a la UTC+02:00.

A common approach to handling dates in an application is to store them in the UTC timezone. The UTC storage allows you to convert dates and times to your needs by adding or subtracting the offset hours for a user.

This tutorial shows you how to convert a date instance to UTC in JavaScript.

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Convert a Date to UTC Timezone in JavaScript

JavaScript dates provide a handful of methods. A useful method for UTC conversion is the Date#toISOString function. The toISOString method converts a JavaScript date into a date time string format which is based on the ISO 8601 standard. The resulting date string is in the format of YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ with UTC timezone, as represented by the Z suffix.

Here’s a sample function converting a given date to UTC:

/**
 * Returns the `date` as a UTC a date-time string.
 *
 * @param {Date} date
 *
 * @returns {String}
 */
function toUtc (date) {  
  if (!(date instanceof Date)) {
    throw new Error('You must pass a date argument to the "toUtc" method')
  }

  return date.toISOString()
}

You can use the toUTC function like this:

toUTC()  
// 💥 Error: You must pass a date argument to the "toUtc" method

toUtc(new Date('2024-12-25'))  
// '2024-12-25T00:00:00.000Z'

What About toUTCString?

JavaScript provides the Date#toUTCString() method that returns a string of a given date in the RFC 7231 format. This format allows negative years and the timezone is always UTC:

new Date('2024-12-25').toUTCString()  
// 'Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT'

The toUTCString() and toGMTString() methods are interchangeable and aliases for each other.

Using the Date#getUTC Methods

JavaScript dates also provide getUTC<unit> methods for each unit: year, month, day, hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. You can use these methods if you want to convert selected parts of a given date to UTC.

Another use-case for these methods is when you’re using a different date format than the ISO 8601 date string.

Here’s the sample code using the getUTC<unit> methods to compose a date string without the T and Z characters.

const date = new Date()

const year = date.getUTCFullYear()  
const month = (date.getUTCMonth() + 1).toString().padStart(2, '0')  
const day = date.getUTCDate().toString().padStart(2, '0')

const hours = date.getUTCHours().toString().padStart(2, '0')  
const minutes = date.getUTCMinutes().toString().padStart(2, '0')  
const seconds = date.getUTCSeconds().toString().padStart(2, '0')  
const milliseconds = date.getUTCMilliseconds().toString().padStart(3, '0')

const utc = `${year}-${month}-${day} ${hours}:${minutes}:${seconds}.${milliseconds}`

console.log(utc)  
// '2024-06-09 04:40:38.058'

Use custom date formats with care because they may only apply to your application. A custom date format may cause hiccups when interacting with other services or when providing data via an API.

That’s it!

Mentioned Resources

Marcus Pöhls

Marcus is a fullstack JS developer. He’s passionate about the hapi framework for Node.js and loves to build web apps and APIs. Creator of Futureflix and the “learn hapi” learning path.

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