Getting Started

Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Submodules

• Installation

Introduction

date-fns provides the most comprehensive, yet simple and consistent toolset for manipulating JavaScript dates in a browser & Node.js.

date-fns is like lodash for dates. It has 200+ functions for all occasions.

import { format, compareAsc } from 'date-fns'

format(new Date(2014, 1, 11), 'MM/dd/yyyy')
//=> '02/11/2014'

const dates = [
  new Date(1995, 6, 2),
  new Date(1987, 1, 11),
  new Date(1989, 6, 10),
]
dates.sort(compareAsc)
//=> [
//   Wed Feb 11 1987 00:00:00,
//   Mon Jul 10 1989 00:00:00,
//   Sun Jul 02 1995 00:00:00
// ]

Submodules

date-fns includes some optional features as submodules in the npm package. Here is the list of them, in order of nesting:

• FP — functional programming-friendly variations of the functions. See FP Guide;

• UTC (in development) — variations of the functions which calculate dates in UTC±00:00 timezone.

The later submodules are also included inside the former if you want to use multiple features from the list.

To use submodule features, install the npm package and then import a function from a submodule:

// The main submodule:
import addDays from 'date-fns/addDays'

// FP variation:
import addDays from 'date-fns/fp/addDays'

// UTC variation:
import addDays from 'date-fns/utc/addDays'

// Both FP and UTC:
import addDays from 'date-fns/fp/utc/addDays'

// With tree-shaking enabled:
import { addDays, format } from 'date-fns/fp'

Installation

The library is available as an npm package.

To install the package, run:

npm install date-fns --save
# or
yarn add date-fns

Start using:

import { formatDistance, subDays } from 'date-fns'

formatDistance(subDays(new Date(), 3), new Date(), { addSuffix: true })
//=> "3 days ago"