my-easy-date-formatter

An npm package aimed to help formatting dates into a more human-friendly way

Introduction

Working with dates in JavaScript can often be cumbersome and error-prone. The native Date object provides basic functionality but lacks easy-to-use methods for formatting dates into human-readable strings. Developers frequently struggle with date formatting, especially when dealing with internationalization, custom formats, or displaying dates in a user-friendly manner.

This package is my solution to at least what I consider the most usual time and date formats that we can find in the wild.

Currently it is only working through the console as working with dates is extremely difficult in Javascript.

Installation

To install run the following

npm install my-easy-date-formatter

Then, to run each function use

npx my-easy-date-formatter <choose your format here> <enter the date here>

For example, if I want to convert the string 2023-10-06T14:30:00.000Z to a long date format, we use:

npx my-easy-date-formatter --longDateWeekday 2023-10-06T14:30:00.000Z

And we should see an output in console with this value:

Friday, October 6th, 2023

Accepted Input

For all the functions, the accepted inputs will be in the following formats, following the American standard of Year Month Day or one of the following:

• Timestamps, these are the number of milliseconds passed since January 1, 1970. For example: 14182940000
• ISO 8601, the standard way of representing dates. They are strings like YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ, for example 2023-10-06T14:30:00.000Z
• Short date format. Currently supporting only US date format MM/DD/YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY
• Long date format. These include the month name and the day as number, followed by the year. Currently supporting only the format MonthName DD, YYYY. For example March 25, 2022
• Long date format with weekday. These strings include the weekday in the way Weekday, MonthName DD, YYYY. For example Friday, September 2, 2023

Keep in mind that every input except for Timestamps (which is an integer) should be a string surrounded by single quotes '' if it happens to have a whitespace. Otherwise it accepts inputs without them, like 12-12-2021, 01/02/2012, but if you try to enter '01 01 2023' you need the single quotes.

How to use

The package contains 5 main functions. Each one is detailed with an example of how to use.Each option has an abbreviation as shown here:

  -V, --version             output the version number
  -fd, --formatDate         returns a date in the UTC format
  -sd, --shortDate          returns a date as MM/DD/YY
  -sy, --shortDateFullYear  returns a date as MM/DD/YYYY
  -ld, --longDate           returns a date as MonthName DD, YYYY
  -lw, --longDateWeekday    returns a date as Weekday, Month DD, YYYY
  -h, --help                display help for command

formatDate()

This function returns a date in the UTC format: Weekday, DD MM YYYY HH:MM:SS Timezone. My goal was to simplify the use of this format, hence the hour and timezone will not be used throughout the rest of the functions.

npx my-easy-date-formatter --formatDate '12/25/2024'

## Output

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT

shortDateFullYear()

This function will return the provided date in the usual US format MM/DD/YYYY.

npx my-easy-date-formatter --shortDateFullYear 1789876761000 # This is a Timestamp

## Output

9/20/2026

shortDate()

This function works by returning the date the same as shortDateFullYear() but with the year as 2-digit number: MM/DD/YY.

npx my-easy-date-formatter --shortDate 'Wed, 25 Dec 2024 05:00:00 GMT' # We can use a long date

# Output

12/25/2024

longDate()

This function will return the date in a format more suited for letters and some informal documents in the format MonthName DD, YYYY. The days are shown using ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on).

npx my-easy-date-formatter --longDate '12-25-24' # We can use a short date as well

# Output

December 25th, 2024

longDateWeekday()

This one will return the whole date including the day of the week. More suited for formal documents. It has the format Weekday, MonthName DD, YYYY. The days are shown using ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and so on).

npx my-easy-date-formatter --longDateWeekday '2023-10-06T00:00:00.000Z' # ISO string

# Output

Friday, October 6th, 2023