How do I format a date as ISO 8601 in moment.js?

Question

This docs mention moment.ISO_8601 as a formatting option (from 2.7.0 - http://momentjs.com/docs/#/parsing/special-formats/), but neither of these work (even 2.7.0):

var date = moment();
date.format(moment.ISO_8601); // error
moment.format(date, moment.ISO_8601); // error

(http://jsfiddle.net/b3d6uy05/1/)

How can I get an ISO 8601 from moment.js?

Answer 1

moment().toISOString(); // or format() - see below

http://momentjs.com/docs/#/displaying/as-iso-string/

Update Based on the answer: by @sennet and the comment by @dvlsg (see Fiddle) it should be noted that there is a difference between format and toISOString. Both are correct but the underlying process differs. toISOString converts to a Date object, sets to UTC then uses the native Date prototype function to output ISO8601 in UTC with milliseconds (YYYY-MM-DD[T]HH:mm:ss.SSS[Z]). On the other hand, format uses the default format (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ) without milliseconds and maintains the timezone offset.

I've opened an issue as I think it can lead to unexpected results.

Answer 2

Use format with no parameters:

var date = moment();
date.format(); // "2014-09-08T08:02:17-05:00"

(http://jsfiddle.net/8gvhL1dz/)

Answer 3

Also possible with vanilla JS

new Date().toISOString() // "2017-08-26T16:31:02.349Z"

Answer 4

When you use Mongoose to store dates into MongoDB you need to use toISOString() because all dates are stored as ISOdates with miliseconds.

moment.format() 

2018-04-17T20:00:00Z

moment.toISOString() -> USE THIS TO STORE IN MONGOOSE

2018-04-17T20:00:00.000Z

Answer 5

If you just want the date portion (e.g. 2017-06-27), and you want it to work regardless of time zone and also in Arabic, here is code I wrote:

function isoDate(date) {
    if (!date) {
        return null
    }
    date = moment(date).toDate()

    // don't call toISOString because it takes the time zone into
    // account which we don't want.  Also don't call .format() because it
    // returns Arabic instead of English

    var month = 1 + date.getMonth()
    if (month < 10) {
        month = '0' + month
    }
    var day = date.getDate()
    if (day < 10) {
        day = '0' + day
    }
    return date.getFullYear() + '-' + month + '-' + day
}