I have a unix timestamp. I want to render it as UTC time

In JS console:

var a = new Date(); 
var res = a.getUTCDay()+ '-' + a.getUTCMonth() + '-' + a.getUTCFullYear(); 
res;

The result is "3-11-2013", but the value of 'a' variable is "Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:28:03 GMT"

What is wrong?

I have a unix timestamp. I want to render it as UTC time

In JS console:

var a = new Date(); 
var res = a.getUTCDay()+ '-' + a.getUTCMonth() + '-' + a.getUTCFullYear(); 
res;

The result is "3-11-2013", but the value of 'a' variable is "Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:28:03 GMT"

What is wrong?

• javascript
• utc

Share Improve this question Follow edited Dec 4, 2013 at 16:36 Felix Kling 818k181181 gold badges1.1k1.1k silver badges1.2k1.2k bronze badges asked Dec 4, 2013 at 16:35 krevedkokrevedko 4,26311 gold badge2020 silver badges1313 bronze badges 3

• 3 Months are zero based, and it seems you're missing a month and a day – adeneo Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 16:37
• 2 You are getting confused. a.getUTCDay() is day of the week. Not the date. – karthikr Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 16:39
• 1 Always read the documentation before you are using a method: developer.mozilla/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/…. It explains what getUTCDay and getUTCMonth return. – Felix Kling Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 16:41

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3 Answers 3

Sorted by: Reset to default 7

What is wrong?

getUTCDay returns the day of the week, not the day of the month:

The getUTCDay() method returns the day of the week in the specified date according to universal time, where 0 represents Sunday.

getUTCMonth returns the month, 0 based:

The value returned by getUTCMonth is an integer between 0 and 11 corresponding to the month. 0 for January, 1 for February, 2 for March, and so on.

You want to use .getUTCDate instead and add +1 to the return value of .getUTCMonth:

var res = [a.getUTCDate(), a.getUTCMonth() + 1, a.getUTCFullYear()].join('-');

The getUTCDay() and getUTCMonth() are both index based (starts with 0), you need to +1 theme to get the "real" value

Unless your codebase is very small, I would refrain from using these poor native JS date formatting functions and just import Moment.js.