How to Work with Date in Plain Javascript — No Libraries Needed

Javascript Date object is not very well-loved in the community. It is something Javascript adopted from Java but both grew in different directions. Its API can be confusing and lacks a lot of methods and information that you often need when working with date and time in your projects.

Javascript and Java Date

The Javascript Date object came from Java. Java introduced Calendar in recent versions and deprecated a lot of Date methods but you still have, what I consider to be, only the good parts about the Java Date object. The javascript Date object feels forgotten sometimes but it includes many things super useful. It simply allows you to access Date and time information and that's it.

Java Date object has methods like compareTo, equals, before, and after which are useful when you are dealing with date and time. Its new Calendar object allows you to access more details you often want when dealing with dates in general.

Date object Pros and Cons

I have nothing against the Date object perhaps because I am used to creating utility functions for what I need and almost always used an external library when dealing with Date and time. I recently shared a video on how to create a date picker using vanilla Javascript and goes to show, working with Date can be complex and requires a lot of work and manipulation.

Here are some cons to that:

• It lacks Date comparison methods;
• It lacks an easy way to calculate the week in the year;
• It has an elaborated/complex way to localize the date;
• It lacks a useful or friendly way to format Date. We got the Intl format method though;
• It is zero-based which is not how we think about dates;
• It forces you to make weird calculations to get simple information like how many days in a month, is a leap year, week number, etc;
• lacks validation. Passing the wrong info to create a Date will not throw an error sometimes resulting in a date with “Invalid Date” as a value;
• Lacks a way to get timezone details. Use Intl Api for this instead;