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How to convert a string in yyyy-mm-dd format to a Javascript Date Object without considering the date as UTC

I really just have a simple question. I want to convert a string in yyyy-mm-dd to a date object in javascript. This seems simple enough. You can just do the following.
var date = new Date('2020-04-08');
But in this case, javascript considers the date '2020-04-08' as UTC midnight. So the actual date that is returned to me is the following.
Tue Apr 07 2020 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
I know I can create a date in the following format
var date = new Date(2020, 3, 8);
Wed Apr 08 2020 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
But it looks like too much hassle to extract the year, month and date from the already nicely formatted date string. Isn't there a simple way to convert yyyy-mm-dd string to a date object without it being treated as UTC date?
So in the simplest terms, my question is how do I tell the date constructor that the date I am passing is not a UTC date but a local date.

Simply append 'T00:00:00' to your date string.
const dateString = '2020-04-08'
const timeString = 'T00:00:00'
const date = new Date(dateString + timeString);
console.info(date.toString())
From the documentation
Support for ISO 8601 formats differs in that date-only strings (e.g. "1970-01-01") are treated as UTC, not local.

Transform format of date [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to get date in UTC format irrespective of current system date with javascript?
(4 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I have following date Thu Apr 02 2020 11:57:21 GMT+0200 (Středoevropský letní čas). I need to compare this date with the date that is stored in API. The problem is that the date in API is in this format 2020-06-27T12:34:00.000Z.
Is there any way I can transform the format of the first date to be the same as the second date? Or can I comprare them in some way, that the formats wont matter?
Thank you in advance.

Use Date.prototype.toISOString()
The toISOString() method returns a string in simplified extended ISO format (ISO 8601),
which is always 24 or 27 characters long (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ or ±YYYYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ, respectively).
The timezone is always zero UTC offset, as denoted by the suffix "Z".
const time = 'Thu Apr 02 2020 11:57:21 GMT+0200 (Středoevropský letní čas)'
const result = new Date(time).toISOString();
console.log(result);

You can do this
const date = new Date("Thu Apr 02 2020 11:57:21 GMT+0200 (Středoevropský letní čas)");
const formattedDate = date.toISOString(); // This the formatted date

YYYY-MM-DD formatted date is taking previous date when we are in eastern time zone [duplicate]

In my Java Script app I have the date stored in a format like so:
2011-09-24
Now when I try using the above value to create a new Date object (so I can retrieve the date in a different format), the date always comes back one day off. See below:
var date = new Date("2011-09-24");
console.log(date);
logs:
Fri Sep 23 2011 20:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

There are several crazy things that happen with a JS DATE object that convert strings, for example consider the following date you provided
Note: The following examples may or may not be ONE DAY OFF depending on YOUR timezone and current time.
new Date("2011-09-24"); // Year-Month-Day
// => Fri Sep 23 2011 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - ONE DAY OFF.
However, if we rearrange the string format to Month-Day-Year...
new Date("09-24-2011");
// => Sat Sep 24 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - CORRECT DATE.
Another strange one
new Date("2011-09-24");
// => Fri Sep 23 2011 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - ONE DAY OFF AS BEFORE.
new Date("2011/09/24"); // change from "-" to "/".
// => Sat Sep 24 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - CORRECT DATE.
We could easily change hyphens in your date "2011-09-24" when making a new date
new Date("2011-09-24".replace(/-/g, '\/')); // => "2011/09/24".
// => Sat Sep 24 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - CORRECT DATE.
What if we had a date string like "2011-09-24T00:00:00"
new Date("2011-09-24T00:00:00");
// => Fri Sep 23 2011 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - ONE DAY OFF.
Now change hyphen to forward slash as before; what happens?
new Date("2011/09/24T00:00:00");
// => Invalid Date.
I typically have to manage the date format 2011-09-24T00:00:00 so this is what I do.
new Date("2011-09-24T00:00:00".replace(/-/g, '\/').replace(/T.+/, ''));
// => Sat Sep 24 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST) - CORRECT DATE.
UPDATE
If you provide separate arguments to the Date constructor you can get other useful outputs as described below
Note: arguments can be of type Number or String. I'll show examples with mixed values.
Get the first month and day of a given year
new Date(2011, 0); // Normal behavior as months in this case are zero based.
// => Sat Jan 01 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST)
Get the last month and day of a year
new Date((2011 + 1), 0, 0); // The second zero roles back one day into the previous month's last day.
// => Sat Dec 31 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST)
Example of Number, String arguments. Note the month is March because zero based months again.
new Date(2011, "02");
// => Tue Mar 01 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST)
If we do the same thing but with a day of zero, we get something different.
new Date(2011, "02", 0); // Again the zero roles back from March to the last day of February.
// => Mon Feb 28 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST)
Adding a day of zero to any year and month argument will get the last day of the previous month. If you continue with negative numbers you can continue rolling back another day
new Date(2011, "02", -1);
// => Sun Feb 27 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (MST)

Notice that Eastern Daylight Time is -4 hours and that the hours on the date you're getting back are 20.
20h + 4h = 24h
which is midnight of 2011-09-24. The date was parsed in UTC (GMT) because you provided a date-only string without any time zone indicator. If you had given a date/time string w/o an indicator instead (new Date("2011-09-24T00:00:00")), it would have been parsed in your local timezone. (Historically there have been inconsistencies there, not least because the spec changed more than once, but modern browsers should be okay; or you can always include a timezone indicator.)
You're getting the right date, you just never specified the correct time zone.
If you need to access the date values, you can use getUTCDate() or any of the other getUTC*() functions:
var d,
days;
d = new Date('2011-09-24');
days = ['Sun', 'Mon', 'Tues', 'Wed', 'Thurs', 'Fri', 'Sat'];
console.log(days[d.getUTCDay()]);

To normalize the date and eliminate the unwanted offset (tested here : https://jsfiddle.net/7xp1xL5m/ ):
var doo = new Date("2011-09-24");
console.log( new Date( doo.getTime() + Math.abs(doo.getTimezoneOffset()*60000) ) );
// Output: Sat Sep 24 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
This also accomplishes the same and credit to #tpartee (tested here : https://jsfiddle.net/7xp1xL5m/1/ ):
var doo = new Date("2011-09-24");
console.log( new Date( doo.getTime() - doo.getTimezoneOffset() * -60000 ) );

I believe that it has to do with time-zone adjustment. The date you've created is in GMT and the default time is midnight, but your timezone is EDT, so it subtracts 4 hours. Try this to verify:
var doo = new Date("2011-09-25 EDT");

Just want to add that apparently adding a space at the end of the string will use UTC for creation.
new Date("2016-07-06")
> Tue Jul 05 2016 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
new Date("2016-07-06 ")
> Wed Jul 06 2016 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Edit: This is not a recommended solution, just an alternative answer. Please do not use this approach since it is very unclear what is happening. There are a number of ways someone could refactor this accidentally causing a bug.

If you want to get hour 0 of some date in the local time zone, pass the individual date parts to the Date constructor.
new Date(2011,08,24); // month value is 0 based, others are 1 based.

if you need a simple solution for this see:
new Date('1993-01-20'.split('-'));

Your issue is specifically with time zone. Note part GMT-0400 - that is you're 4 hours behind GMT. If you add 4 hours to the displayed date/time, you'll get exactly midnight 2011/09/24. Use toUTCString() method instead to get GMT string:
var doo = new Date("2011-09-24");
console.log(doo.toUTCString());

This probably is not a good answer, but i just want to share my experience with this issue.
My app is globally use utc date with the format 'YYYY-MM-DD', while the datepicker plugin i use only accept js date, it's hard for me to consider both utc and js. So when i want to pass a 'YYYY-MM-DD' formatted date to my datepicker, i first convert it to 'MM/DD/YYYY' format using moment.js or whatever you like, and the date shows on datepicker is now correct. For your example
var d = new Date('2011-09-24'); // d will be 'Fri Sep 23 2011 20:00:00 GMT-0400 (EDT)' for my lacale
var d1 = new Date('09/24/2011'); // d1 will be 'Sat Sep 24 2011 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (EDT)' for my lacale
Apparently d1 is what i want. Hope this would be helpful for some people.

You can convert this date to UTC date by
new Date(Date.UTC(Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Second))
And it is always recommended to use UTC (universal time zone) date instead of Date with local time, as by default dates are stored in Database with UTC. So, it is good practice to use and interpret dates in UTC format throughout entire project.
For example,
Date.getUTCYear(), getUTCMonth(), getUTCDay(), getUTCHours()
So, using UTC dates solves all the problem related to timezone issues.

This through me for a loop, +1 on zzzBov's answer. Here is a full conversion of a date that worked for me using the UTC methods:
//myMeeting.MeetingDate = '2015-01-30T00:00:00'
var myDate = new Date(myMeeting.MeetingDate);
//convert to JavaScript date format
//returns date of 'Thu Jan 29 2015 19:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)' <-- One Day Off!
myDate = new Date(myDate.getUTCFullYear(), myDate.getUTCMonth(), myDate.getUTCDate());
//returns date of 'Fri Jan 30 2015 00:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)' <-- Correct Date!

It means 2011-09-24 00:00:00 GMT, and since you're at GMT -4, it will be 20:00 the previous day.
Personally, I get 2011-09-24 02:00:00, because I'm living at GMT +2.

Though in the OP's case the timezone is EDT, there's not guarantee the user executing your script will be int he EDT timezone, so hardcoding the offset won't necessarily work. The solution I found splits the date string and uses the separate values in the Date constructor.
var dateString = "2011-09-24";
var dateParts = dateString.split("-");
var date = new Date(dateParts[0], dateParts[1] - 1, dateParts[2]);
Note that you have to account for another piece of JS weirdness: the month is zero-based.

I encountered this exact problem where my client was on Atlantic Standard Time. The date value the client retrieved was "2018-11-23" and when the code passed it into new Date("2018-11-23") the output for the client was for the previous day. I created a utility function as shown in the snippet that normalized the date, giving the client the expected date.
date.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() + date.getTimezoneOffset());
var normalizeDate = function(date) {
date.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() + date.getTimezoneOffset());
return date;
};
var date = new Date("2018-11-23");
document.getElementById("default").textContent = date;
document.getElementById("normalized").textContent = normalizeDate(date);
<h2>Calling new Date("2018-11-23")</h2>
<div>
<label><b>Default</b> : </label>
<span id="default"></span>
</div>
<hr>
<div>
<label><b>Normalized</b> : </label>
<span id="normalized"></span>
</div>

My solution to parse an ISO date without beeing annoyed by the timezone is to add a "T12:00:00" at the end before parsing it, because when it's noon at Greenwich, well the whole world is on the same day :
function toDate(isoDateString) {
// isoDateString is a string like "yyyy-MM-dd"
return new Date(`${isoDateString}T12:00:00`);
}
Before:
> new Date("2020-10-06")
> Date Mon Oct 05 2020 14:00:00 GMT-1000 (heure normale d’Hawaii - Aléoutiennes)
After:
> toDate("2020-10-06")
> Date Tue Oct 06 2020 12:00:00 GMT-1000 (heure normale d’Hawaii - Aléoutiennes)

if you're just looking to make sure the individual parts of the date stay the same for display purposes, *this appears to work, even when I change my timezone:
var doo = new Date("2011-09-24 00:00:00")
just add the zeros in there.
In my code I do this:
let dateForDisplayToUser =
new Date( `${YYYYMMDDdateStringSeparatedByHyphensFromAPI} 00:00:00` )
.toLocaleDateString(
'en-GB',
{ day: 'numeric', month: 'short', year: 'numeric' }
)
And I switch around my timezone on my computer and the date stays the same as the yyyy-mm-dd date string I get from the API.
But am I missing something/is this a bad idea ?
*at least in chrome. This Doesn't work in Safari ! as of this writing

As most answers are hacky, allow me to propose my very simple hack that worked for me: Set the script's timezone to UTC
process.env.TZ = 'UTC' // this has to be run before any use of dates
With this change, any timezone modifications are neutralized, so as long as you don't need the runner's actual timezone, this is probably the easiest fix.

// When the time zone offset is absent, date-only formats such as '2011-09-24'
// are interpreted as UTC time, however the date object will display the date
// relative to your machine's local time zone, thus producing a one-day-off output.
const date = new Date('2011-09-24');
console.log(date); // Fri Sep 23 2011 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString('en-US')); // "9/23/2011"
// To ensure the date object displays consistently with your input, simply set
// the timeZone parameter to 'UTC' in your options argument.
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString('en-US', { timeZone: 'UTC' })); // "9/24/2011"

The best way to handle this without using more conversion methods,
var mydate='2016,3,3';
var utcDate = Date.parse(mydate);
console.log(" You're getting back are 20. 20h + 4h = 24h :: "+utcDate);
Now just add GMT in your date or you can append it.
var mydateNew='2016,3,3'+ 'GMT';
var utcDateNew = Date.parse(mydateNew);
console.log("the right time that you want:"+utcDateNew)
Live: https://jsfiddle.net/gajender/2kop9vrk/1/

I faced some issue like this. But my issue was the off set while getting date from database.
this is stroed in the database and it is in the UTC format.
2019-03-29 19:00:00.0000000 +00:00
So when i get from database and check date it is adding offset with it and send back to javascript.
It is adding +05:00 because this is my server timezone. My client is on different time zone +07:00.
2019-03-28T19:00:00+05:00 // this is what i get in javascript.
So here is my solution what i do with this issue.
var dates = price.deliveryDate.split(/-|T|:/);
var expDate = new Date(dates[0], dates[1] - 1, dates[2], dates[3], dates[4]);
var expirationDate = new Date(expDate);
So when date come from the server and have server offset so i split date and remove server offset and then convert to date. It resolves my issue.

Trying to add my 2 cents to this thread (elaborating on #paul-wintz answer).
Seems to me that when Date constructor receives a string that matches first part of ISO 8601 format (date part) it does a precise date conversion in UTC time zone with 0 time. When that date is converted to local time a date shift may occur
if midnight UTC is an earlier date in local time zone.
new Date('2020-05-07')
Wed May 06 2020 20:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
If the date string is in any other "looser" format (uses "/" or date/month is not padded with zero) it creates the date in local time zone, thus no date shifting issue.
new Date('2020/05/07')
Thu May 07 2020 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
new Date('2020-5-07')
Thu May 07 2020 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
new Date('2020-5-7')
Thu May 07 2020 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
new Date('2020-05-7')
Thu May 07 2020 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
So then one quick fix, as mentioned above, is to replace "-" with "/" in your ISO formatted Date only string.
new Date('2020-05-07'.replace('-','/'))
Thu May 07 2020 00:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

This solved my problem (thanks to #Sebastiao answer)
var date = new Date();
//"Thu Jun 10 2021 18:46:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)"
date.toString().split(/\+|-/)[0] ; // .split(/\+|-/) is a regex for matching + or -
//"Thu Jun 10 2021 18:46:00 GMT"
var date_string_as_Y_M_D = (new Date(date)).toISOString().split('T')[0];
//2021-06-10

I just wanted to give my 2 cents on this, as this post was very helpful to figure out the issue. I don't think I've seen this solution mentioned, correct me if I'm wrong.
As it has been mentioned numerous times already here, the problem comes mainly from summer/winter time. I noticed that in January, the GMT was +1. If the time is not set, it will always be 00.00.00 (midnight), which results in going on the 23rd hour of the previous day.
If you have a dynamic date and don't care about the hour, you can set the hour using the setHours() method before using it with toISOString().
syntax:
setHours(hoursValue, minutesValue, secondsValue, msValue)
Which means that:
dynamicDate.setHours(12, 0, 0, 0)
dynamicDate.toISOString()
should hopefully work for you as even if the date is one hour ahead/behind it will still be the same day now that we're setting the hour to be noon.
More about setHours() on MDN.

You can use moment library to format the date.
https://momentjs.com/
let format1 = "YYYY-MM-DD"
let date = new Date();
console.log(moment(date).format(format1))
EDIT
The moment is now deprecated, you can use date-fns format method for formatting a date.
import { format } from 'date-fns'
format(new Date(), "yyyy-MM-dd")

You are using the ISO date string format which, according to this page, causes the date to be constructed using the UTC timezone:
Note: parsing of date strings with the Date constructor (and
Date.parse, they are equivalent) is strongly discouraged due to
browser differences and inconsistencies. Support for RFC 2822 format
strings is by convention only. Support for ISO 8601 formats differs in
that date-only strings (e.g. "1970-01-01") are treated as UTC, not
local.
If you format the text differently, such as "Jan 01 1970", then (at least on my machine) it uses your local timezone.

Storing yyyy-mm-dd in MySql Date format you must do the following:
const newDate = new Date( yourDate.getTime() + Math.abs(yourDate.getTimezoneOffset()*60000) );
console.log(newDate.toJSON().slice(0, 10)); // yyyy-mm-dd

Following Code worked for me. First I converted to date and time string to localeDateString then apply the split function on the returned string.
const dateString = "Thu Dec 29 2022 00:00:00 GMT+0500 (Pakistan Standard Time)";
const date = new Date(dateString).toLocaleDateString().split("/");
const year = new Date(dateString).getFullYear();
const month = new Date(dateString).getMonth();
console.log(new Date(`${date[2]}-${date[0]}-${date[1]}`));
// 2022-12-29T00:00:00.000Z
// Due to timezone issue, the date is one day off.
console.log(new Date("2011-09-24"));
// => 2011-09-24T00:00:00.000Z-CORRECT DATE.
console.log(new Date("2011/09/24"));
// => 2011-09-23T19:00:00.000Z -ONE DAY OFF AS BEFORE.

Using moment you can keep Offset while converting toISOString
let date = moment("2022-03-15").toISOString();
// WRONG OUTPUT 2022-03-14T18:30:00.000Z
let date = moment("2022-03-15").toISOString(true);
// CORRECT OUTPUT 2022-03-15T00:00:00.000+05:30

The following worked for me -
var doo = new Date("2011-09-24").format("m/d/yyyy");

Javascript new Date(dateString) handling

Would someone explain why formatting the same dateString differently gives a different date?
> new Date("04/08/1984")
<· Sun Apr 08 1984 00:00:00 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time)
> new Date("1984-04-08")
<· Sat Apr 07 1984 18:00:00 GMT-0600 (Mountain Daylight Time)

When you create a new Date object passing a dateString parameter to the constructor, it gets parsed using the Date.parse() method. Now, quoting from the MDN documentation (emphasis mine):
Differences in assumed time zone
Given a date string of "March 7, 2014" (or "03/07/2014"), parse() assumes a local time zone, but given an ISO format such as "2014-03-07" it will assume a time zone of UTC. Therefore Date objects produced using those strings will represent different moments in time unless the system is set with a local time zone of UTC.
Therefore, since that your are giving the second string in the ISO format, and your local time zone is UTC+6, you're getting a date which is six hour behind yours, because it gets calculated as UTC+0. In fact:
Apr 07 1984 18:00:00 = Apr 08 1984 00:00:00 - 06:00:00
Mystery solved!

Your problem is that you are adding 0 before the numbers in "1984-04-08". Try the following:
new Date("1984-4-8")
document.write(new Date("04/08/1984"));
document.write("<br>");
document.write(new Date("1984-4-8"));

In Javascript: Why new Date('2012-1-15') - new Date('2012-01-15') == 21600000

I'm confused but in javascript:
> new Date('2012-1-15') - new Date('2012-01-15')
21600000
Why is that? (21600000 / 1000 / 3600 == 6 hours)

The date format yyyy-mm-dd (2012-01-15) is parsed as being a UTC date while yyyy-m-dd (2012-1-15) is parsed as a local date. This is shown if you use .toString on each.
> (new Date( '2012-01-15' )).toString()
"Sat Jan 14 2012 16:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)"
> (new Date( '2012-1-15' )).toString()
"Sun Jan 15 2012 00:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)"
Note that I am in California, hence the Pacific Standard Time. If you are in a different time zone you will get different results.
When JavaScript parses dates it tries formats used in more areas (such as UTC) first before it tries localized date formats. The last part of the UTC date format is a timezone offset from GMT which is assumed to be 0 when it is missing (as it is in this example). To get the same date you would need the full UTC timestamp: 2012-01-15T00:00:00-08:00.

The result of new Date('2012-1-15') is implementation-dependent (ECMAScript standard, clause 15.9.4.2).

a= new Date('2012-1-16')
b= new Date('2012-01-16')
alert(a);
alert(b);
For the first case, the constructor function sets time to 00:00 in your time zone. But in the second case, it initialize time relative to GMT +00.00