toString


new DateTime().toString(); 
new DateTime().toString(String);

This is the most robust display option. It takes a string of tokens and replaces them with their corresponding values.

           
new DateTime().toString(); 
new DateTime().toString("dddd, MMMM Do YYYY, h:mm:ss a"); 
new DateTime().toString("ddd, hA");

String Format

	Token	Output
Month	M	1 2 ... 11 12
	Mo	1st 2nd ... 11th 12th
	MM	01 02 ... 11 12
	MMM	Jan Feb ... Nov Dec
	MMMM	January February ... November December
Quarter	Q	1 2 3 4
	Qo	1st 2nd 3rd 4th
Day of Month	D	1 2 ... 30 31
	Do	1st 2nd ... 30th 31st
	DD	01 02 ... 30 31
Day of Year	DDD	1 2 ... 364 365
	DDDo	1st 2nd ... 364th 365th
	DDDD	001 002 ... 364 365
Day of Week	d	0 1 ... 5 6
	do	0th 1st ... 5th 6th
	dd	Su Mo ... Fr Sa
	ddd	Sun Mon ... Fri Sat
	dddd	Sunday Monday ... Friday Saturday
Day of Week (Locale)	e	0 1 ... 5 6
Day of Week (ISO)	E	1 2 ... 6 7
Week of Year	w	1 2 ... 52 53
	wo	1st 2nd ... 52nd 53rd
	ww	01 02 ... 52 53
Week of Year (ISO)	W	1 2 ... 52 53
	Wo	1st 2nd ... 52nd 53rd
	WW	01 02 ... 52 53
Year	YY	70 71 ... 29 30
	YYYY	1970 1971 ... 2029 2030
	Y	1970 1971 ... 9999 +10000 +10001 Note:* This complies with the ISO 8601 standard for dates past the year 9999
Week Year	gg	70 71 ... 29 30
	gggg	1970 1971 ... 2029 2030
Week Year (ISO)	GG	70 71 ... 29 30
	GGGG	1970 1971 ... 2029 2030
AM/PM	A	AM PM
	a	am pm
Hour	H	0 1 ... 22 23
	HH	00 01 ... 22 23
	h	1 2 ... 11 12
	hh	01 02 ... 11 12
	k	1 2 ... 23 24
	kk	01 02 ... 23 24
Minute	m	0 1 ... 58 59
	mm	00 01 ... 58 59
Second	s	0 1 ... 58 59
	ss	00 01 ... 58 59
Fractional Second	S	0 1 ... 8 9
	SS	00 01 ... 98 99
	SSS	000 001 ... 998 999
	SSSS ... SSSSSSSSS	000 [0..] 001 [0..] ... 998 [0..] 999 [0..]
Time Zone	z or zz	EST CST ... MST PST Note: as of 1.6.0, the z/zz format tokens have been deprecated from plain DateTime objects. [Read more about it here.](https://github.com/DateTime/DateTime/issues/162) However, they _do_ work if you are using a specific time zone with the DateTime-timezone addon.
	Z	-07:00 -06:00 ... +06:00 +07:00
	ZZ	-0700 -0600 ... +0600 +0700
Unix Timestamp	X	1360013296
Unix Millisecond Timestamp	x	1360013296123

humanize

Returns a string representing the duration between the date and now for a human. By default, the return string is suffixless. If you want a suffix, pass in true as seen below.


DateTime.today().humanize();

Localized formats

Because preferred formatting differs based on locale, there are a few tokens that can be used to format a DateTime based on its locale. There are upper and lower case variations on the same formats. The lowercase version is intended to be the shortened version of its uppercase counterpart.

Time	LT	8:30 PM
Time with seconds	LTS	8:30:25 PM
Month numeral, day of month, year	L	09/04/1986
	l	9/4/1986
Month name, day of month, year	LL	September 4, 1986
	ll	Sep 4, 1986
Month name, day of month, year, time	LLL	September 4, 1986 8:30 PM
	lll	Sep 4, 1986 8:30 PM
Month name, day of month, day of week, year, time	LLLL	Thursday, September 4, 1986 8:30 PM
	llll	Thu, Sep 4, 1986 8:30 PM

Escaping characters

To escape characters in format strings, you can wrap the characters in square brackets. new DateTime().toString('[today] dddd');

Similarities and differences with LDML

**Note:** While these date formats are very similar to LDML date formats, there are a few minor differences regarding day of month, day of year, and day of week. For a breakdown of a few different date formatting tokens across different locales, see this chart of date formatting tokens.

Formatting speed

To compare DateTime.js formatting speed against other libraries, check out this comparison against other libraries.

Other tokens

If you are more comfortable working with strftime instead of LDML-like parsing tokens, you can use Ben Oakes' plugin. benjaminoakes/DateTime-strftime .

Default format calling

`DateTime#toString` without a format will default to `DateTime.defaultFormat`. Out of the box, `DateTime.defaultFormat` is the ISO8601 format `YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ`. when in UTC mode, the default format is governed by `DateTime.defaultFormatUtc` which is in the format `YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss [Z]`. This returns `Z` as the offset, instead of `+00:00`. In certain instances, a local timezone (such as `Atlantic/Reykjavik`) may have a zero offset, and will be considered to be UTC. In such cases, it may be useful to set `DateTime.defaultFormat` and `DateTime.defaultFormatUtc` to use the same formatting.

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