date.toDateString

The toDateString() method returns the date portion of a Date object in human readable form in American English.

Syntax

dateObj.toDateString()

Return value

A string representing the date portion of the given Date object in human readable form in American English.

Description

Date instances refer to a specific point in time. Calling toString() will return the date formatted in a human readable form in American English. In SpiderMonkey, this consists of the date portion (day, month, and year) followed by the time portion (hours, minutes, seconds, and time zone). Sometimes it is desirable to obtain a string of the date portion; such a thing can be accomplished with the toDateString() method.

The toDateString() method is especially useful because compliant engines implementing ECMA-262 may differ in the string obtained from toString() for Date objects, as the format is implementation-dependent and simple string slicing approaches may not produce consistent results across multiple engines.

Examples

A basic usage of toDateString()

var d = new Date(1993, 6, 28, 14, 39, 7);

console.log(d.toString());     // logs Wed Jul 28 1993 14:39:07 GMT-0600 (PDT)
console.log(d.toDateString()); // logs Wed Jul 28 1993

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
ECMAScript 3rd Edition (ECMA-262)	Standard	Initial definition.
ECMAScript 5.1 (ECMA-262) The definition of 'Date.prototype.toDateString' in that specification.	Standard
ECMAScript 2015 (6th Edition, ECMA-262) The definition of 'Date.prototype.toDateString' in that specification.	Standard
ECMAScript 2017 Draft (ECMA-262) The definition of 'Date.prototype.toDateString' in that specification.	Draft

Browser compatibility

See also

• Date.prototype.toLocaleDateString()
• Date.prototype.toTimeString()
• Date.prototype.toString()