Get the Current Year in JavaScript or Node.js

The JavaScript engine comes with a global Date class. Interacting with dates is an essential part of programming. JavaScript’s Date comes with two methods to retrieve the current year: Date#getYear and Date#getFullYear.

This tutorial shows you what to look out for when using one or another and walks you through the details!

Node.js Series Overview

  1. String Replace All Appearances
  2. Remove All Whitespace From a String in JavaScript
  3. Generate a Random ID or String in Node.js or JavaScript
  4. Remove Extra Spaces From a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  5. Remove Numbers From a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  6. Get the Part Before a Character in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  7. Get the Part After a Character in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  8. How to Check if a Value is a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  9. Check If a String Includes All Strings in JavaScript/Node.js/TypeScript
  10. Check if a Value is a String in JavaScript and Node.js
  11. Limit and Truncate a String to a Given Length in JavaScript and Node.js
  12. Split a String into a List of Characters in JavaScript and Node.js
  13. How to Generage a UUID in Node.js
  14. Reverse a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  15. Split a String into a List of Lines in JavaScript or Node.js
  16. Split a String into a List of Words in JavaScript or Node.js
  17. Detect if a String is in camelCase Format in Javascript or Node.js
  18. Check If a String Is in Lowercase in JavaScript or Node.js
  19. Check If a String is in Uppercase in JavaScript or Node.js
  20. Get the Part After First Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  21. Get the Part Before First Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  22. Get the Part Before Last Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  23. Get the Part After Last Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  24. How to Count Words in a File
  25. How to Shuffle the Characters of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  26. Append Characters or Words to a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  27. Check if a String is Empty in JavaScript or Node.js
  28. Ensure a String Ends with a Given Character in JavaScript or Node.js
  29. Left-Trim Characters Off a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  30. Right-Trim Characters Off a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  31. Lowercase the First Character of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  32. Uppercase the First Character of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  33. Prepend Characters or Words to a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  34. Check if a String is a Number
  35. Convert a String to Buffer
  36. Prevent Line Breaks in String Template Literals
  37. How to Implement a Custom `toString` Method (Coming soon)
  38. What Is `Symbol.toStringTag` and How to Use It (Coming soon)

Get the Current Year Number in JavaScript

Let’s say you may want to retrieve the year number in JavaScript to show a copyright hint in the footer of your website. Typically something like this:

© 2022 Future Studio. All Rights reserved

This use case requires only the year number. You don’t need the day or month of a date.

**Retrieve the year number from a JavaScript date using the getFullYear() method:

new Date().getFullYear()  
// 2022

JavaScript’s „Date#getYear“ is Deprecated

JavaScript also comes with a Date#getYear() method. This method is deprecated because it returns the number of years since 1900.

That seems strange, but during the years until 1999 dates typically contained the year only as a two-digit number. For example, 1986 would be 86. But with the year 2000, the year number 86 isn’t unique anymore. Computers wouldn’t know if it means 1986 or 2086.

That’s why JavaScript introduced a method returning the full year. Please don’t use the Date#getYear method and prefer Date#getFullYear.

Here’s a sample output when using the deprecated method:

new Date().getYear()  
// 122 (which is the number of years since 1900)

Enjoy retrieving year numbers!

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