Date Formatter

This Date Formatter tool helps you convert a date into a different date format. Just enter the exact date, specify the format pattern and click on convert button.

📅 Date Formatter

✍ Result

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The Date Formatter is a simple online tool that helps you display a date based on a format. Whether you want to convert a numeric date (02/14/2024) to a textual date (14 February 2024), or the other way around, this converter will validate and format your date based on a given pattern of characters.

How to use the Date Formatter?

  1. Step 1

    First, enter the date and/or time on the Date and Time input field. You can do it by directly typing them or you can click on the
    Calendar icon and select the date and/or time.

  2. Step 2

    Then, on the Format input field, enter the date format that you want. As a reference, you can check out the Date Format Characters table so you can run your experiments.

  3. Step 3

    Finally, click on the Convert button to process your conversion. The output will be displayed just below the ✍ Result heading. If you want to clear the fields, you can do that by clicking on the Reset button.

Date Format Characters

There are quite a lot of characters that makes up the combination of patterns for formatting date. However, there are just quite a short list of characters that is being commonly used. These are the characters you can use on the Date Formatter above to get your desired date format.

Please note that on this table, we are using the as our example date and time.

CharactersOutputDetails
Weekday
d00 to 6 number of day of the week where 0 is Sunday, 1 is Monday up to 6 which is Saturday.
ddSuFirst 2 letters of day. Example: Su for Sunday
dddSunFirst 3 letters of day. Example: Mon for Monday
ddddSundayComplete name of day
Day
D11 - 31 numeric calendar day of the month
Do1st1st - 31st ordinal calendar day of the month
DD0101 - 31 zero-padded calendar day of the month
DDD3361 - 366 calendar day of the year
DDDo336th1st - 366th ordinal calendar day of the year
DDDD336001 - 366 zero-padded calendar day of the year
Month
M121 - 12 numeric month
MM121 - 12 numeric month with zero padding
Mo12th1st - 12th ordinal month
MMMDecFirst 3 letters of the month name. Example: Feb for February
MMMMDecemberFull name of the month
Year
Y2024Full year
YY24Last 2 digits of year
YYYY20244 digits of year
Week
w491 - 53 week number of the year
ww4901 - 53 zero-padded week of the year
wo49th1st - 53rd ordinal week of the year
Hours
h71 - 12 of the 12 hours time format
hh0701 - 12 zero-padded 12 hours time format
H190 - 23 of the 24 hours time format
HH1900 - 23 zero-padded 24 hours time format
Minutes
m300 - 59 minutes
mm3000 - 59 zero-padded minutes
s900 - 59 seconds
ss0900 - 59 zero-padded seconds
Meridiem
apmam/pm in small letters
APMAM/PM in capital letters
Timezone
Z+00:00UTC offset. Example: +08:00
ZZ+0000UTC offset without semicolon. Example: +0800
S00 - 9 Deciseconds
SS0000 - 99 zero-padded centiseconds
SSS000000 - 999 zero-padded milliseconds

Note that the characters that is used on date formats are case-sensitive. For example, the proper usage to display month in a 3-letter abbreviation is MMM where all are in capital letters. If you try to enter with small letters like mmm, you'll get a numeric result that we won't decipher what it means.

One important note as well is that date character patterns may differ from one computer system to another. So, if you are trying to figure out the date format for the system or application you are using, make sure to read it's official documentation for correct characters.

Date Format Patterns

Based on the date format characters or tokens displayed on the table above, you can now convert a date into a different format, here are commonly used date formats:

FormatOutput
MMMM Do YYYYDecember 1st 2024
Do MMMM YYYY1st December 2024
MMMM D, YYYYDecember 1, 2024
MMMM Do YYYY, h:mm:ss aDecember 1st 2024, 7:30:09 pm
dddd, MMMM D, YYYY, h:mm:ss aSunday, December 1, 2024, 7:30:09 pm
dddd, D MMMM YYYY, h:mm:ss aSunday, 1 December 2024, 7:30:09 pm
ddd, D MMM YYYY HH:MM:SS ASun, 1 Dec 2024 19:30:09 PM
MM/DD/YYYY12/01/2024
YYYY-MM-DD2024-12-01
MMM D, YYYYDec 1, 2024
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ2024-12-01T19:30:09+00:00

Date Formats and Date Standard

There are two types of date formats, the numeric and the textual format. Let us quickly examine these formats.

Numeric Date Format

Also commonly referred to as short date format, it is composed of numbers that represents the day, month and year. The common separators between them are forward slash (/), hyphen (-), dot (.), and open space. Although it can also be written without any separator.

When a separator (/ or -) is used, it will be called an extended numeric format. If the date is written is purely numbers without any separators, then it is referred to as basic numeric format.

Today's date in numeric format with forward slash (/) as our separator:

2024/12/08

  • 2024 is the year.
  • 12 is the two digits month (01 being January up to 12 as December).
  • 08 is the two-digit day (01 up to 31 if applicable).

Textual Date Format

The other date format is called textual date or sometimes referred to as long date format. The notable distinction of this format against numeric one is that the month is written fully or sometimes abbreviated. The date written on this format is much easier to read by people that why it's called human-readable.

Let's take today's date and display it in textual or long format:

December 8, 2024

  • December is today's month.
  • 8 is the day of the month.
  • 2024 is the complete year.

Date Format Standard (ISO 8601)

When the date is in a text format as the 5th of January 2024, it really tells the exact date. But when it is in numeric format as 01/05/2024, it could mean January 5 or May 1, 2024. To avoid this possible confusion, is there really a standard for date format?

There is an international standard for date and time format, it's called ISO 8601. The order for writing date based on ISO 8601 is from year, month, day, hour, minutes, seconds and milliseconds.

The standard format for date is YYYY-MM-DD where YYYY stands for the complete year, the MM for months padded with zero and the DD for the day padded as well with zero if necessary.

To elaborate this in a very simple way, the numeric equivalent of January 5, 2024 using the ISO 8601 is 2024-01-05.

Notice that because two-digit is required for month and day, they are being padded with zero.

This standard is often used on numeric dates. For dates in textual or long format such as January 5, 2024, where the month is written at full length or abbreviated, there are quite some versions to express it depending on your country.

Common Date Formats

These are the common date formats being date as our example:

  • March 15th 2024
  • March 15, 2024
  • Mar 15, 2024
  • 15 March 2024
  • 15th March 2024
  • The 15th of March in the year 2024
  • Saturday, March 15, 2024
  • 15/01/2024 or 15-01-2024
  • 2024-01-15 or 2024/01/15

What is Date Formatter used for?

This date formatter online tool's primary purpose is to convert a date into a different format using a combination of date formatting characters to achieve the appropriate format specially if it's used on browser applications or computer programs.