How to convert a Date to UTC?

Date.prototype.toUTCArray= function(){
    var D= this;
    return [D.getUTCFullYear(), D.getUTCMonth(), D.getUTCDate(), D.getUTCHours(),
    D.getUTCMinutes(), D.getUTCSeconds()];
}

Date.prototype.toISO= function(){
    var tem, A= this.toUTCArray(), i= 0;
    A[1]+= 1;
    while(i++<7){
        tem= A[i];
        if(tem<10) A[i]= '0'+tem;
    }
    return A.splice(0, 3).join('-')+'T'+A.join(':');    
}

My solution keeps the date the same no matter what timezone is set on the client-side. Maybe someone will find it useful.

My use case:

I'm creating a todo app, where you set date of your task. This date should remain constant no matter what timezone you're in.

Example. You want to call your friend at 8 am on June 25th.

You create this task 5 days before (June 20th) while you're in China.

Then, on the same day, you fly to New York for a few days.

Then on June 25th, while you're still in New York, you wake up at 7:30 am (which means you should receive task notification in 30 mins (even tho it's 1:30 pm already in China where you were when creating the task)

So the task is ignoring the timezone. It means 'I want to do it at 8 am in whatever timezone I'll be in'.

What I do is let's say 'I assume you're always in London Timezone - UTC'.

What it means is - when the user picks some date in her/his Timezone - I convert this date to the same date in UTC. ie. You pick 8 am in China, but I convert it to 8 am in UTC.

Then - next time you open the app - I read the date saved in UTC and convert it to the same date in your current timezone - eg. I convert 8 am in UTC to 8 am in the New York timezone.

This solution means that the date can mean something else depending on where you are when setting it and where you're reading it, but it remains constant in a way that it 'feels' like you're always in the same timezone.

Let's write some code:

First - we have 2 main functions for converting from/to UTC ignoring timezone:

export function convertLocalDateToUTCIgnoringTimezone(date: Date) {
  const timestamp = Date.UTC(
    date.getFullYear(),
    date.getMonth(),
    date.getDate(),
    date.getHours(),
    date.getMinutes(),
    date.getSeconds(),
    date.getMilliseconds(),
  );

  return new Date(timestamp);
}

export function convertUTCToLocalDateIgnoringTimezone(utcDate: Date) {
  return new Date(
    utcDate.getUTCFullYear(),
    utcDate.getUTCMonth(),
    utcDate.getUTCDate(),
    utcDate.getUTCHours(),
    utcDate.getUTCMinutes(),
    utcDate.getUTCSeconds(),
    utcDate.getUTCMilliseconds(),
  );
}

Then, I save/read this date like:

function saveTaskDate(localDate: Date) {
  // I convert your local calendar date so it looks like you've picked it being in UTC somewhere around London
  const utcDate = convertLocalDateToUTCIgnoringTimezone(localDate);
  api.saveTaskDate(utcDate);
}

function readTaskDate(taskUtcDate: Date) {
  // I convert this UTC date to 'look in your local timezone' as if you were now in UTC somewhere around london
  const localDateWithSameDayAsUTC = convertUTCToLocalDateIgnoringTimezone(taskUtcDate);

  // this date will have the same calendar day as the one you've picked previously
  // no matter where you were saving it and where you are now
}

var myDate = new Date(); // Set this to your date in whichever timezone.
var utcDate = myDate.toUTCString();

Are you trying to convert the date into a string like that?

I'd make a function to do that, and, though it's slightly controversial, add it to the Date prototype. If you're not comfortable with doing that, then you can put it as a standalone function, passing the date as a parameter.

Date.prototype.getISOString = function() {
    var zone = '', temp = -this.getTimezoneOffset() / 60 * 100;
    if (temp >= 0) zone += "+";
    zone += (Math.abs(temp) < 100 ? "00" : (Math.abs(temp) < 1000 ? "0" : "")) + temp;

    // "2009-6-4T14:7:32+10:00"
    return this.getFullYear()   // 2009
         + "-"
         + (this.getMonth() + 1) // 6
         + "-"
         + this.getDate()       // 4
         + "T"
         + this.getHours()      // 14
         + ":"
         + this.getMinutes()    // 7
         + ":"
         + this.getSeconds()    // 32
         + zone.substr(0, 3)    // +10
         + ":"
         + String(temp).substr(-2) // 00
    ;
};

If you needed it in UTC time, just replace all the get* functions with getUTC*, eg: getUTCFullYear, getUTCMonth, getUTCHours... and then just add "+00:00" at the end instead of the user's timezone offset.

I've found the jQuery Globalization Plugin date parsing to work best. Other methods had cross-browser issues and stuff like date.js had not been updated in quite a while.

You also don't need a datePicker on the page. You can just call something similar to the example given in the docs:

$.parseDate('yy-mm-dd', '2007-01-26');

I just discovered that the 1.2.3 version of Steven Levithan's date.format.js does just what I want. It allows you to supply a format string for a JavaScript date and will convert from local time to UTC. Here's the code I'm using now:

// JavaScript dates don't like hyphens!    
var rectifiedDateText = dateText.replace(/-/g, "/");
var d = new Date(rectifiedDateText);

// Using a predefined mask from date.format.js.
var convertedDate = dateFormat(d, 'isoUtcDateTime'); 

Using moment.js UTC method;

const moment = require('moment');
const utc = moment.utc(new Date(string));

If you need Date Object

Passing only date string Date assumes time to be 00:00 shifted by time zone:

new Date('2019-03-11')
Sun Mar 10 2019 18:00:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)

If you add current hours and minutes you get proper date:

new Date('2019-03-11 ' + new Date().getHours() + ':' + new Date().getMinutes())
Mon Mar 11 2019 04:36:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)

The getTimezoneOffset() method returns the time zone difference, in minutes, from current locale (host system settings) to UTC.

Source: MDN web docs

This means that the offset is positive if the local timezone is behind UTC, and negative if it is ahead. For example, for time zone UTC+02:00, -120 will be returned.

let d = new Date();
console.log(d);
d.setTime(d.getTime() + (d.getTimezoneOffset() * 60000));
console.log(d);

NOTE: This will shift the date object time to UTC±00:00 and not convert its timezone so the date object timezone will still the same but the value will be in UTC±00:00.

For other people whos goal is to get it as a "Date Object" and not as a string, and you only want to display the date/time without the TZ (probably hardcoded), what you can do is:

const now = new Date();
const year = now.getUTCFullYear();
const month = now.getUTCMonth();
const day = now.getUTCDate();
const hour = now.getUTCHours();

const tomorrowUTC= new Date();
tomorrowUTC.setDate(day + 1); // +1 because my logic is to get "tomorrow"
tomorrowUTC.setYear(year);
tomorrowUTC.setMonth(month);
tomorrowUTC.Hours(hour);

// then use the tomorrowUTC for to display/format it
// tomorrowUTC is a "Date" and not a string.

You can then do stuff like:

We will delete your account at ${format(tomorrowUTC, 'EEEE do MMMM hh:mmaaa')} UTC

(format is a date-fns function, you can use other lib if you want);

This is kinda "hacky" as this is still using your local timezone, but if you just wanna display the date and not the timezone, then this works.

If your date has the timezone on it you can use date-fns-tz:

import { zonedTimeToUtc } from 'date-fns-tz';

const dateBrazil = new Date() // I'm in Brazil, you should have or get the user timezone.
const dateUtc = zonedTimeToUtc(dateBrazil, 'America/Sao_Paulo')

Using moment package, you can easily convert a date string of UTC to a new Date object:

const moment = require('moment');
let b = new Date(moment.utc('2014-02-20 00:00:00.000000'));
let utc = b.toUTCString();
b.getTime();

This specially helps when your server do not support timezone and you want to store UTC date always in server and get it back as a new Date object. Above code worked for my requirement of similar issue that this thread is for. Sharing here so that it can help others. I do not see exactly above solution in any answer. Thanks.

You can use the following method to convert any js date to UTC:

let date = new Date(YOUR_DATE).toISOString()

// It would give the date in format "2020-06-16T12:30:00.000Z" where Part before T is date in YYYY-MM-DD format, part after T is time in format HH:MM:SS  and Z stands for UTC - Zero hour offset

By far the best way I found to get the GMT time is first get your local date time. Then convert in to GMT String. Then use the string to build new time by removing the timezone.

let dtLocal = new Date()
let dt = new Date(dtLocal.toISOString().split('Z')[0])

Note: - it will create the new datetime in GMT. But it will be local date time as timezone will be attached to it.

Extension function:

if (!Date.prototype.toUTC){
    Date.prototype.toUTC = function(){
        var utcOffset = new Date().getTimezoneOffset();
        var utcNow    = new Date().addMinutes(utcOffset);
        return utcNow;
    };
}

Usage:

new Date().toUTC();

So this is the way I had to do it because i still wanted a JavaScript date object to manipulate as a date and unfortunantly alot of these answers require you to go to a string.

//First i had a string called stringDateVar that i needed to convert to Date
var newDate = new Date(stringDateVar)

//output: 2019-01-07T04:00:00.000Z
//I needed it 2019-01-07T00:00:00.000Z because i had other logic that was dependent on that 

var correctDate = new Date(newDate.setUTCHours(0))

//This will output 2019-01-07T00:00:00.000Z on everything which allows scalability 

As per what I observe,

var timeUtc = new Date();

timeUtc will always have UTC time but if you debug or console the browser will always show time as per the current timezone.

If you send timeUtc as a parameter to any post request then in the network tab of chrome you can check the post data and you will see timeUtc will have UTC time.

const event = new Date();

console.log(event.toUTCString());