JavaScript .toLocaleDateString()

The .toLocalDateString() date method returns a modified string of a given Date object, usually for events. It is translated to a specific language according to an event’s locale and other options.

Syntax

const myEventDate = new Date('December 31, 2021');

const locale = 'en-US';

const options = {
  weekday: 'long',
  month: 'long',
  day: 'numeric',
  year: 'numeric',
};

myEventDate.toLocaleDateString(locale, options);

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Example Without Parameters

When used without any parameters, .toLocaleDateString() returns a string with the month, day, and year options defaulted to numeric. How they’re arranged and formatted depends on the default locale in which the method was used.

In the example below, .toLocaleDateString() is being used in the en-US locale (more specifically, in the America/Los_Angeles timezone).

const date = new Date(2021, 12, 31);

console.log(date.toLocaleDateString());
// Output: 12/31/2021

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Format Based on Language/Region

Dates with a specific language format can be returned by passing a country or region’s short-code (string) as the locale parameter, as shown in the example below:

const date = new Date(2021, 11, 31);

// US English - month/day/year
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString('en-US'));

// Korean - year. month. day.
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString('ko-KR'));

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The output will be:

12/31/2021
2021. 12. 31.

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Format with Options

The options parameter can be used to provide additional formatting to the returned date string:

const birthday = new Date(2022, 3, 11);

options = {
  year: 'numeric',
  month: 'long',
  day: 'numeric',
  weekday: 'long',
};

console.log(birthday.toLocaleDateString('en-US', options));

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The output will be:

Monday April 11, 2022

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Codebyte Example

In the following example the variables region and options can be modified, to print the Date in a custom format:

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