Native datetime formatter

The simpler the better. Here's a dead simple date formatter snippet that works in all modern browsers as well as node apps.

// define formatter
const locale = 'en-US';
const options = {
  year: 'numeric',
  month: 'short',
  day: 'numeric',
  hour: 'numeric',
  minute: '2-digit'
};
const formatter = new Intl.DateTimeFormat(locale, options);

// use
const date = new Date();
const formattedDate = formatter.format(date);

Typed version is also here:

	// define formatter
	const locales: string | string[] = 'en-US';
	const options: Intl.DateTimeFormatOptions = {
	year: 'numeric',
	month: 'short',
	day: 'numeric',
	hour: 'numeric',
	minute: '2-digit'
	};
	const formatter: Intl.DateTimeFormat = new Intl.DateTimeFormat(
	locales,
	options
	);
	// use
	const date = new Date();
	const formattedDate = formatter.format(date);

view raw datetime-format.ts hosted with ❤ by GitHub

What's going on above? We grab the current date with new Date(), instantiate the formatter with Intl.DateTimeFormat providing the locale string and date format options object.

Tiny playground file:

datetime-format.js

const date = new Date();
const locales = ['en-US', 'en-GB', 'en-CA'];
const options = {
  year: 'numeric',
  month: 'short',
  day: 'numeric',
  hour: 'numeric',
  minute: '2-digit'
};

for (let locale of locales) {
  const formatter = new Intl.DateTimeFormat(locale, options);
  const formattedDate = formatter.format(date);
  console.log(`formattedDate: ${locale} -->`, formattedDate);
}

Running it in node will produce the following result:

~/dev/node-playground » node datetime-format.js
formattedDate: en-US --> Dec 16, 2021, 2:28 AM
formattedDate: en-GB --> 16 Dec 2021, 2:28
formattedDate: en-CA --> Dec. 16, 2021, 2:28 a.m.

Sweet. No deps. Just using the platform.

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More info on MDN: DateTimeFormat