How to get the UTC date in JavaScript
Łukasz Holeczek
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Working with UTC dates is crucial for building applications that handle users across different timezones and for consistent server communication.
As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve handled timezone-related date operations in countless global applications over 25 years of development.
From my expertise, the most reliable approach is using the built-in UTC methods like getUTCFullYear(), getUTCMonth(), and getUTCDate() to extract timezone-independent values.
This ensures consistent date handling regardless of the user’s local timezone.
Use UTC methods to get timezone-independent date components.
const now = new Date()
const utcYear = now.getUTCFullYear()
const utcMonth = now.getUTCMonth()
const utcDate = now.getUTCDate()
Here the UTC methods extract date components in Coordinated Universal Time, ignoring the local timezone offset. getUTCFullYear() returns the 4-digit year, getUTCMonth() returns 0-based month (0 = January), and getUTCDate() returns the day of the month. These values remain consistent regardless of where the code runs.
Best Practice Note:
This is the same UTC handling approach we use in CoreUI components for global application compatibility.
Always use UTC methods when storing dates on servers or comparing dates across timezones, and consider using toISOString() for standardized UTC string representation.
