How to Determine if a Variable is a Date

May 26, 2021

JavaScript dates are considered objects. The typeof operator returns 'object' for dates, so you can't use typeof to distinguish whether a value is a date. You should use instanceof instead.

let x = new Date();
if (x instanceof Date) {
  // will execute
}

Object.prototype.toString.call()

A longer alternative is the Object.prototype.toString.call(variableToCheck) method. It returns the internal class property of an object in a string of format '[object Type]', so a date would be '[object Date]'.

let x = new Date();
if (Object.prototype.toString.call(x) === "[object Date]") {
  // will execute
}

Check for validity

Now that you know how to check if the variable is a date, you need to check if it is a valid date. You can use the !isNaN() function to check whether a date is valid.

let x = new Date("Bad String");
if (x instanceof Date) {
  // executes, because `x` is technically a date object
}
if (x instanceof Date && !isNaN(x)) {
  // will not execute
}

If x is a Date, isNaN(x) is equivalent to Number.isNaN(x.valueOf()). Dates have a valueOf() function that returns a numeric representation of the date as milliseconds since the Unix epoch.

// 86400000, or 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000
new Date('1970-01-02T00:00:00.000Z').valueOf();

Another common trick you might see is using the > operator. Remember that you can use < and > to compare dates in JavaScript as shown below, so d > 0 will return true if d is a date with a positive, non-NaN valueOf().

const validDate = new Date('2021-01-01');
const zeroDate = new Date(0);
const invalidDate = new Date('fail');

validDate > 0; // true
zeroDate > 0; // false
invalidDate > 0; // false

validDate >= 0; // true
zeroDate >= 0; // true
invalidDate >= 0; // false

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