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Date.prototype.toUTCString()

The toUTCString() method of Date instances returns a string representing this date in the RFC 7231 format, with negative years allowed. The timezone is always UTC. toGMTString() is an alias of this method.

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Syntax

toUTCString()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A string representing the given date using the UTC time zone (see description for the format). Returns "Invalid Date" if the date is invalid.

Description

The value returned by toUTCString() is a string in the form Www, dd Mmm yyyy hh:mm:ss GMT, where:

Format String	Description
`Www`	Day of week, as three letters (e.g. `Sun`, `Mon`)
`dd`	Day of month, as two digits with leading zero if required
`Mmm`	Month, as three letters (e.g. `Jan`, `Feb`)
`yyyy`	Year, as four or more digits with leading zeroes if required
`hh`	Hour, as two digits with leading zero if required
`mm`	Minute, as two digits with leading zero if required
`ss`	Seconds, as two digits with leading zero if required

Aliasing

JavaScript's Date API was inspired by Java's java.util.Date library (while the latter had become de facto legacy since Java 1.1 in 1997). In particular, the Java Date class had a method called toGMTString — which was poorly named, because the Greenwich Mean Time is not equivalent to the Coordinated Universal Time, while JavaScript dates always operate by UTC time. For web compatibility reasons, toGMTString remains as an alias to toUTCString, and they refer to the exact same function object. This means:

Date.prototype.toGMTString.name === "toUTCString";

Examples

Using toUTCString()

const d = new Date(0);
console.log(d.toUTCString()); // 'Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT'

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript Language Specification # sec-date.prototype.toutcstring

Browser compatibility

	Desktop						Mobile						Server
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	Deno	Node.js
`toUTCString`	1	12	1	4	1	18	4	10.1	1	1.0	4.4	1.0	0.10.0