Parsing a date string with a non-standard date format pattern using Moment.js

05 Oct 2023

When working with dates, it’s common to encounter date strings that do not follow the standard date format patterns recognized by JavaScript’s Date object. In such cases, parsing the date string can be challenging. However, using a powerful library like Moment.js, we can easily parse non-standard date strings and work with them effortlessly.

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to parse a non-standard date string using Moment.js, and then format and manipulate the resulting date object.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following prerequisites installed on your development machine:

Node.js and NPM (Node Package Manager)

Installing Moment.js

To get started, let’s install Moment.js as a dependency in our project. Open your terminal or command prompt and run the following command:

npm install moment

This command will download and install Moment.js in your project’s node_modules directory.

Parsing a Non-Standard Date String

Once Moment.js is installed, we can use it to parse non-standard date strings. The key is to provide the date string and the corresponding format pattern to Moment.js.

Here’s an example of how to parse a non-standard date string using Moment.js:

const moment = require('moment');

const dateStr = '18_04_2022';
const formatPattern = 'DD_MM_YYYY';

const parsedDate = moment(dateStr, formatPattern);

console.log(parsedDate);

In the example above, we first import Moment.js using require. Then, we define our date string as dateStr and our non-standard format pattern as formatPattern.

We then use moment(dateStr, formatPattern) to parse the date string and store the resulting date object in parsedDate.

Finally, we log the parsedDate object to the console to see the parsed result.

Formatting and Manipulating the Date Object

Once we have the parsed date object, we can easily format and manipulate it using Moment.js’s various functions and methods.

Here are a few examples of how to format and manipulate the parsed date object:

// Format the date object
const formattedDate = parsedDate.format('dddd, MMMM Do YYYY');
console.log(formattedDate);

// Extract specific date components
const dayOfWeek = parsedDate.format('dddd');
const dayOfMonth = parsedDate.format('Do');
console.log(`The parsed date is on ${dayOfWeek}, ${dayOfMonth}`);

// Add or subtract time from the date object
const modifiedDate = parsedDate.add(1, 'day');
console.log(modifiedDate);

In the code snippets above, we demonstrate how to format the parsed date using format(). We can provide different format strings to get the desired format.

We also showcase how to extract specific date components from the parsed date using format().

Finally, we use the add() method to add one day to the parsed date and verify the modified date.

Conclusion

By leveraging Moment.js, parsing non-standard date strings becomes a breeze. We can easily format and manipulate the resulting date object to suit our needs.

Remember to install Moment.js as a dependency in your project, and then provide the date string and format pattern to the moment() function to parse the date string.

So next time you’re faced with parsing a non-standard date string, feel confident knowing that you can rely on Moment.js to handle it effortlessly!

#momentjs #dateparsing