When working with date and time in JavaScript, the Moment.js library is a popular choice due to its flexibility and ease of use. However, it follows the standard date and time format patterns defined by the ISO-8601 standard. But what if you have a non-standard time format pattern? In this article, we will learn how to parse a time string with a non-standard time format pattern using Moment.js.
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
To follow along with this tutorial, you’ll need to have the Moment.js library installed in your project. You can either include it directly in your HTML file using a script tag or install it via a package manager like npm or yarn.
Parsing a Time String
Moment.js provides a moment() function that allows us to create moment objects from timestamps, dates, and strings. By default, it attempts to parse the string using the ISO-8601 standard format. For example:
const timeString = '2022-01-01T12:30:00';
const momentObj = moment(timeString);
console.log(momentObj.format('HH:mm:ss'));
// Output: 12:30:00
In the above example, the time string follows the ISO-8601 format, and Moment.js can successfully parse it and format it as desired.
Custom Time Format Pattern
What if you have a time string in a non-standard format? Moment.js provides a way to parse time strings with custom format patterns using the moment().parse() function. Let’s consider an example:
const timeString = '01/01/2022 12:30 PM';
const momentObj = moment(timeString, 'MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm A');
console.log(momentObj.format('HH:mm:ss'));
// Output: 12:30:00
In the above example, the moment() function takes the time string and the custom format pattern as parameters. The format pattern consists of various tokens, such as MM for the month, DD for the day, YYYY for the year, hh for the hour, mm for the minutes, and A for AM/PM indicator.
By passing the custom format pattern, Moment.js can parse the time string correctly and format it as desired.
Conclusion
Moment.js is a powerful library for handling dates and times in JavaScript. In this article, we learned how to parse time strings with non-standard time format patterns using Moment.js. By leveraging the moment().parse() function and defining the custom format pattern, we can accurately parse time strings in various formats.
It is important to keep in mind that Moment.js is a deprecated library. It is recommended to use alternatives like Luxon and Day.js, which offer similar functionality with improved performance and maintainability.
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#MomentJs #TimeParsing