How to set input type date's default value to today?

Like any HTML input field, the browser will leave the date element empty unless a default value is specified within the value attribute. Unfortunately, HTML5 doesn't provide a way of specifying 'today' in the HTMLInputElement.prototype.value.

One must instead explicitly provide a RFC3339 formatted date (YYYY-MM-DD). For example:

element.value = "2011-09-29" 

Use HTMLInputElement.prototype.valueAsDate:

document.getElementById('datePicker').valueAsDate = new Date(); 

The JavaScript Date object provides enough built-in support for the required format to avoid doing it manually:

Add this for correct timezone support*:

Date.prototype.toDateInputValue = (function() { var local = new Date(this); local.setMinutes(this.getMinutes() - this.getTimezoneOffset()); return local.toJSON().slice(0,10); }); 

jQuery:

$(document).ready( function() { $('#datePicker').val(new Date().toDateInputValue()); });​ 

Pure JS:

document.getElementById('datePicker').value = new Date().toDateInputValue(); 

⚠️ * Important update: The original answer contains code that modifies the native Date prototype which is something that should be avoided. Here's the functional approach which is 100% safe and should be used instead:

function toDateInputValue(dateObject){ const local = new Date(dateObject); local.setMinutes(dateObject.getMinutes() - dateObject.getTimezoneOffset()); return local.toJSON().slice(0,10); }; document.getElementById('datePicker').value = toDateInputValue(new Date()); 

jQuery:

$(document).ready( function() { $('#datePicker').val(toDateInputValue(new Date())); });​ 

This relies upon PHP:

<input type="date" value="<?php echo date('Y-m-d'); ?>" /> 

You could fill the default value through JavaScript as seen here:

http://jsfiddle.net/7LXPq/

$(document).ready( function() { var now = new Date(); var month = (now.getMonth() + 1); var day = now.getDate(); if (month < 10) month = "0" + month; if (day < 10) day = "0" + day; var today = now.getFullYear() + '-' + month + '-' + day; $('#datePicker').val(today); }); 

I would probably put a bit of extra time to see if the month and date are single digits and prefix them with the extra zero...but this should give you an idea.

EDIT: Added check for the extra zero.

In HTML5 as such, there is no way to set the default value of the date field to today’s date? As shown in other answers, the value can be set using JavaScript, and this is usually the best approach if you wish to set the default according to what is current date to the user when the page is loaded.

HTML5 defines the valueAsDate property for input type=date elements, and using it, you could set the initial value directly from an object created e.g. by new Date(). However, e.g. IE 10 does not know that property. (It also lacks genuine support to input type=date, but that’s a different issue.)

So in practice you need to set the value property, and it must be in ISO 8601 conformant notation. Nowadays this can be done rather easily, since we can expect currenty used browsers to support the toISOString method:

<input type=date id=e> <script> document.getElementById('e').value = new Date().toISOString().substring(0, 10); </script> 

Follow the standard Y-m-d format, if you are using PHP

<input type="date" value="<?php echo date("Y-m-d"); ?>"> 

HTML

<input type="date" id="theDate"> 

JQuery

$(document).ready(function() { var date = new Date(); var day = date.getDate(); var month = date.getMonth() + 1; var year = date.getFullYear(); if (month < 10) month = "0" + month; if (day < 10) day = "0" + day; var today = year + "-" + month + "-" + day +"T00:00"; $("#theDate").attr("value", today); }); 

demo

If you don't want to use jQuery you can do something like this

JS

var date = new Date(); var day = date.getDate(); var month = date.getMonth() + 1; var year = date.getFullYear(); if (month < 10) month = "0" + month; if (day < 10) day = "0" + day; var today = year + "-" + month + "-" + day; document.getElementById("theDate").value = today; 

demo

TS

const date = new Date() const year = date.getFullYear() let month: number | string = date.getMonth() + 1 let day: number | string = date.getDate() if (month < 10) month = '0' + month if (day < 10) day = '0' + day const today = `${year}-${month}-${day}` document.getElementById("theDate").value = today; 

HTML:

<input type="date" value="2022-01-31"> 

PHP:

<input type="date" value="<?= date('Y-m-d') ?>"> 

Date format must be "yyyy-mm-dd"

If you're doing anything related to date and time in the brower, you want to use Moment.js:

moment().format('YYYY-MM-DD'); 

moment() returns an object representing the current date and time. You then call its .format() method to get a string representation according to the specified format. In this case, YYYY-MM-DD.

Full example:

<input id="today" type="date"> <script> document.getElementById('today').value = moment().format('YYYY-MM-DD'); </script> 

Javascript

document.getElementById('date-field').value = new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10); 

Jquery

$('#date-field').val(new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10)); 

Another Option

If you want to customize the date, month and year just do sum or sub as your wish 😎 For month is started form 0 that is why need to sum 1 with the month.

function today() { let d = new Date(); let currDate = d.getDate(); let currMonth = d.getMonth()+1; let currYear = d.getFullYear(); return currYear + "-" + ((currMonth<10) ? '0'+currMonth : currMonth )+ "-" + ((currDate<10) ? '0'+currDate : currDate ); } 

Appy the today function

document.getElementById('date-field').value = today(); $('#date-field').val(today()); 

Simplest working version I tested:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <input type="date" id="date" name="date"> <script> $('#date').val(new Date().toJSON().slice(0,10)); </script>

use moment.js to solve this issue in 2 lines, html5 date input type only accept "YYYY-MM-DD" this format. I solve my problem this way.

var today = moment().format('YYYY-MM-DD'); $('#datePicker').val(today); 

this is simplest way to solve this issue.

This is very much simple by applying following code, Using PHP

<input type="date" value="<?= date('Y-m-d', time()); ?>" /> 

Date function will return current date, by taking date in time().

<input id="datePicker" type="date" /> 

$(document).ready( function() { var now = new Date(); var day = ("0" + now.getDate()).slice(-2); var month = ("0" + (now.getMonth() + 1)).slice(-2); var today = now.getFullYear()+"-"+(month)+"-"+(day) ; $('#datePicker').val(today); });

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <input id="datePicker" type="date" />

Both top answers are incorrect.

A short one-liner that uses pure JavaScript, accounts for the local timezone and requires no extra functions to be defined:

const element = document.getElementById('date-input'); element.valueAsNumber = Date.now()-(new Date()).getTimezoneOffset()*60000;

<input id='date-input' type='date'>

This gets the current datetime in milliseconds (since epoch) and applies the timezone offset in milliseconds (minutes * 60k milliseconds per minute).

You can set the date using element.valueAsDate but then you have an extra call to the Date() constructor.

Very Simple, Just use server side languages like PHP,ASP,JAVA or even you can use javascript.

Here is the solution

<?php $timezone = "Asia/Colombo"; date_default_timezone_set($timezone); $today = date("Y-m-d"); ?> <html> <body> <input type="date" value="<?php echo $today; ?>"> </body> </html> 

It is possible in one line of JS.

HTML:

<input type="date" id="theDate"> 

JS:

document.getElementById('theDate').value = new Date().toISOString().substring(0, 10); 

document.getElementById('theDate').value = new Date().toISOString().substring(0, 10);

<input type="date" id="theDate">

if you need to fill input datetime you can use this:

<input type="datetime-local" name="datetime" value="<?php echo date('Y-m-d').'T'.date('H:i'); ?>" /> 

For NodeJS (Express with SWIG templates):

<input type="date" id="aDate" name="aDate" class="form-control" value="{{ Date.now() | date("Y-m-d") }}" /> 

The simplest solutions seem to overlook that UTC time will be used, including highly up-voted ones. Below is a streamlined, ES6, non-jQuery version of a couple of existing answers:

const today = (function() { const now = new Date(); const month = (now.getMonth() + 1).toString().padStart(2, '0'); const day = now.getDate().toString().padStart(2, '0'); return `${now.getFullYear()}-${month}-${day}`; })(); console.log(today); // as of posting this answer: 2019-01-24 

This is what I did in my code, I have just tested and it worked fine, input type="date" does not support to set curdate automatically, so the way I used to overcome this limitation was using PHP code a simple code like this.

<html> <head></head> <body> <form ...> <?php echo "<label for='submission_date'>Data de submissão</label>"; echo "<input type='date' name='submission_date' min='2012-01-01' value='" . date('Y-m-d') . "' required/>"; ?> </form> </body> </html> 

Hope it helps!

This is something you really need to do server-side as each user's local time format differs, not to mention each browser behaves different.

Html Date inputs value should be in this format: yyyy-mm-dd otherwise it will not show a value.

ASP CLASSIC , OR VBSCRIPT:

current_year = DatePart("yyyy",date) current_month = DatePart("m",date) current_day = DatePart("d",date) IF current_month < 10 THEN current_month = "0"&current_month END IF IF current_day < 10 THEN current_day = "0"&current_day END IF get_date = current_year&"-"&current_month&"-"&current_day Response.Write get_date 

Output of today's date : 2019-02-08

Then in your html: <input type="date" value="<% =get_date %>"

PHP

just use this: <input type="date" value="<?= date("Y-m-d"); ?>">

To match the original query.

date.value = new Date().toJSON().split('T')[0]

<input type="date" id="date"/>

Even after all these time, it might help someone. This is simple JS solution.

JS

 let date = new Date(); let today = date.toISOString().substr(0, 10); //console.log("Today: ", today);//test document.getElementById("form-container").innerHTML = '<input type="date" name="myDate" value="' + today + '" >';//inject field 

HTML

 <form id="form-container"></form> 

Similar solution works in Angular without any additional library to convert date format. For Angular (code is shortened due to common component code):

//so in myComponent.ts //Import.... @Component...etc... date: Date = new Date(); today: String; //<- note String //more const ... export class MyComponent implements OnInit { //constructor, etc.... ngOnInit() { this.today = this.date.toISOString().substr(0, 10); } } //so in component.html <input type="date" [(ngModel)]="today" /> 

A future proof solution, also an alternative to .split("T")[0] that doesn't create a string array in memory, would be using String.slice() as shown below:

new Date().toISOString().slice(0, -14); 

A lot of the answers given here, such as slice(0, 10), substring(0, 10) etc will fail in the future.
They use Date.toJSON() which returns Date.toISOString():

The toISOString() method returns a string in simplified extended ISO format (ISO 8601), which is always 24 or 27 characters long (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ or ±YYYYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ, respectively). The timezone is always zero UTC offset, as denoted by the suffix "Z".

Once the year becomes 5 digit, these answers will fail.

datePickerId.value = new Date().toISOString().slice(0, -14);

<input type="date" id="datePickerId" />

This returns in the same YYYY-MM-DD format as in ISO but in your local time instead of being UTC.

function getToday() { return new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-CA', { year: 'numeric', month: '2-digit', day: '2-digit' }); } 

Use .defaultValue property of the input:date element to set the default value of the date to today's date.

<input type="date" id="date"/> window.onload = function loadDate() { let date = new Date(), day = date.getDate(), month = date.getMonth() + 1, year = date.getFullYear(); if (month < 10) month = "0" + month; if (day < 10) day = "0" + day; const todayDate = `${year}-${month}-${day}`; document.getElementById("date").defaultValue = todayDate; }; loadDate(); 

Or make it IIFE/self-called function, on window load

window.onload = (function loadDate() { let date = new Date(), day = date.getDate(), month = date.getMonth() + 1, year = date.getFullYear(); if (month < 10) month = "0" + month; if (day < 10) day = "0" + day; const todayDate = `${year}-${month}-${day}`; document.getElementById("date").defaultValue = todayDate; })(); 

Using defaultValue property gives dynamic advantage, unlike setting the date using the value attribute.

Also, note that the date format must be matched, hence my use of the format for todayDate as:

yyyy-mm-dd

I believe this answers your question, except you want to set a static start and end date. To do this, kindly follow the example below from Mozilla:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/date>

by Javascript:

var today = new Date(); document.getElementById("theDate").value = today.getFullYear() + '-' + ('0' + (today.getMonth() + 1)).slice(-2) + '-' + ('0' + today.getDate()).slice(-2); 

new Date().getFullYear()+"-"+ ((parseInt(new Date().getMonth())+1+100)+"").substring(1)