Date.prototype.toUTCString()

The toUTCString() method converts a date to a string, interpreting it in the UTC time zone. toGMTString() is an alias of this method.

Based on rfc7231 and modified according to ECMA-262 toUTCString, it can have negative values.

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Syntax

toUTCString()

Return value

A string representing the given date using the UTC time zone.

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 today = new Date("Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 PDT");
const UTCstring = today.toUTCString(); // Wed, 14 Jun 2017 07:00:00 GMT

Specifications

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

Browser compatibility

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See also