<input type="date">

The input UI generally varies from browser to browser; see Browser compatibility for further details. In unsupported browsers, the control degrades gracefully to <input type="text">.

A string representing the date entered in the input. The date is formatted according to Date strings format.

You can set a default value for the input with a date inside the value attribute, like so:

<input type="date" value="2017-06-01" />

You can get and set the date value in JavaScript with the HTMLInputElement value and valueAsNumber properties. For example:

const dateControl = document.querySelector('input[type="date"]');
dateControl.value = "2017-06-01";
console.log(dateControl.value); // prints "2017-06-01"
console.log(dateControl.valueAsNumber); // prints 1496275200000, a JavaScript timestamp (ms)

This code finds the first <input> element whose type is date, and sets its value to 2017-06-01 (June 1st, 2017). It then reads that value back in string and number formats.

The attributes common to all <input> elements apply to the date inputs as well, but might not influence its presentation. For example size and placeholder might not work. date inputs have the following additional attributes.

The latest date to accept. If the value entered into the element occurs afterward, the element fails constraint validation. If the value of the max attribute isn't a possible date string in the format yyyy-mm-dd, then the element has no maximum date value.

If both the max and min attributes are set, this value must be a date string later than or equal to the one in the min attribute.

The earliest date to accept. If the value entered into the element occurs beforehand, the element fails constraint validation. If the value of the min attribute isn't a possible date string in the format yyyy-mm-dd, then the element has no minimum date value.

If both the max and min attributes are set, this value must be a date string earlier than or equal to the one in the max attribute.

The step attribute is a number that specifies the granularity that the value must adhere to, or the special value any, which is described below. Only values which are equal to the basis for stepping (min if specified, value otherwise, and an appropriate default value if neither of those is provided) are valid.

A string value of any means that no stepping is implied, and any value is allowed (barring other constraints, such as min and max).

For date inputs, the value of step is given in days; and is treated as a number of milliseconds equal to 86,400,000 times the step value (the underlying numeric value is in milliseconds). The default value of step is 1, indicating 1 day.

Date inputs provide an easy interface for choosing dates, and they normalize the data format sent to the server regardless of the user's locale.

In this section, we'll look at basic and then more complex uses of <input type="date">.

The simplest use of <input type="date"> involves one <input> combined with its <label>, as seen below:

<form action="https://example.com">
  <label>
    Enter your birthday:
    <input type="date" name="bday" />
  </label>

  <p><button>Submit</button></p>
</form>

This HTML submits the entered date under the key bday to https://example.com — resulting in a URL like https://example.com/?bday=1955-06-08.

You can use the min and max attributes to restrict the dates that can be chosen by the user. In the following example, we set a minimum date of 2017-04-01 and a maximum date of 2017-04-30:

<form>
  <label>
    Choose your preferred party date:
    <input type="date" name="party" min="2017-04-01" max="2017-04-30" />
  </label>
</form>

The result is that only days in April 2017 can be selected — the month and year parts of the textbox will be uneditable, and dates outside April 2017 can't be selected in the picker widget.

<input type="date"> doesn't support form sizing attributes such as size. Prefer CSS for sizing it.

By default, <input type="date"> doesn't validate the entered value beyond its format. The interfaces generally don't let you enter anything that isn't a date — which is helpful — but you can leave the field empty or enter an invalid date in browsers where the input falls back to type text (like the 32nd of April).

If you use min and max to restrict the available dates (see Setting maximum and minimum dates), supporting browsers will display an error if you try to submit a date that is out of bounds. However, you'll need to double-check the submitted results to ensure the value is within these dates, if the date picker isn't fully supported on the user's device.

You can also use the required attribute to make filling in the date mandatory — an error will be displayed if you try to submit an empty date field. This should work in most browsers, even if they fall back to a text input.

Let's look at an example of minimum and maximum dates, and also made a field required:

<form>
  <label>
    Choose your preferred party date (required, April 1st to 20th):
    <input
      type="date"
      name="party"
      min="2017-04-01"
      max="2017-04-20"
      required />
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </label>

  <p>
    <button>Submit</button>
  </p>
</form>

If you try to submit the form with an incomplete date (or with a date outside the set bounds), the browser displays an error. Try playing with the example now:

Here's the CSS used in the above example. We make use of the :valid and :invalid pseudo-elements to add an icon next to the input, based on whether the current value is valid. We had to put the icon on a <span> next to the input, not on the input itself, because in Chrome at least the input's generated content is placed inside the form control, and can't be styled or shown effectively.

label {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
}

span::after {
  padding-left: 5px;
}

input:invalid + span::after {
  content: "✖";
}

input:valid + span::after {
  content: "✓";
}

Browsers that don't support this input type gracefully degrade to a text input, but this creates problems in consistency of user interface (the presented controls are different) and data handling.

The second problem is the more serious one; with date input supported, the value is normalized to the format yyyy-mm-dd. But with a text input, the browser has no recognition of what format the date should be in, and there are many formats in which people write dates. For example:

• ddmmyyyy
• dd/mm/yyyy
• mm/dd/yyyy
• dd-mm-yyyy
• mm-dd-yyyy
• Month dd, yyyy

One way around this is the pattern attribute on your date input. Even though the date picker doesn't use it, the text input fallback will. For example, try viewing the following in an unsupporting browser:

<form>
  <label>
    Enter your birthday:
    <input type="date" name="bday" required pattern="\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}" />
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </label>
  <p>
    <button>Submit</button>
  </p>
</form>

If you submit it, you'll see that the browser displays an error and highlights the input as invalid if your entry doesn't match the pattern ####-##-## (where # is a digit from 0 to 9). Of course, this doesn't stop people from entering invalid dates, or incorrect formats. So we still have a problem.

span {
  position: relative;
}

span::after {
  right: -18px;
  position: absolute;
}

input:invalid + span::after {
  content: "✖";
}

input:valid + span::after {
  content: "✓";
}

At the moment, the best way to deal with dates in forms in a cross-browser way is to have the user enter the day, month, and year in separate controls, or to use a JavaScript library such as jQuery date picker.

In this example, we create 2 sets of UI elements for choosing dates: a native <input type="date"> picker and a set of 3 <select> elements for older browsers that don't support the native date input.

The HTML looks like so:

<form>
  <div class="nativeDatePicker">
    <label for="bday">Enter your birthday:</label>
    <input type="date" id="bday" name="bday" />
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <p class="fallbackLabel">Enter your birthday:</p>
  <div class="fallbackDatePicker">
    <span>
      <label for="day">Day:</label>
      <select id="day" name="day"></select>
    </span>
    <span>
      <label for="month">Month:</label>
      <select id="month" name="month">
        <option selected>January</option>
        <option>February</option>
        <option>March</option>
        <option>April</option>
        <option>May</option>
        <option>June</option>
        <option>July</option>
        <option>August</option>
        <option>September</option>
        <option>October</option>
        <option>November</option>
        <option>December</option>
      </select>
    </span>
    <span>
      <label for="year">Year:</label>
      <select id="year" name="year"></select>
    </span>
  </div>
</form>

The months are hardcoded (as they are always the same), while the day and year values are dynamically generated depending on the currently selected month and year, and the current year (see the code comments below for detailed explanations of how these functions work.)

span {
  padding-left: 5px;
}

input:invalid + span::after {
  content: "✖";
}

input:valid + span::after {
  content: "✓";
}

The other part of the code that may be of interest is the feature detection code — to detect whether the browser supports <input type="date">.

We create a new <input> element, try setting its type to date, then immediately check what its type is — unsupporting browsers will return text, because the date type falls back to type text. If <input type="date"> isn't supported, we hide the native picker and show the fallback (<select>) instead.

// Obtain UI widgets
const nativePicker = document.querySelector(".nativeDatePicker");
const fallbackPicker = document.querySelector(".fallbackDatePicker");
const fallbackLabel = document.querySelector(".fallbackLabel");

const yearSelect = document.querySelector("#year");
const monthSelect = document.querySelector("#month");
const daySelect = document.querySelector("#day");

// hide fallback initially
fallbackPicker.style.display = "none";
fallbackLabel.style.display = "none";

// test whether a new date input falls back to a text input or not
const test = document.createElement("input");

try {
  test.type = "date";
} catch (e) {
  console.log(e.message);
}

// if it does, run the code inside the if () {} block
if (test.type === "text") {
  // hide the native picker and show the fallback
  nativePicker.style.display = "none";
  fallbackPicker.style.display = "block";
  fallbackLabel.style.display = "block";

  // populate the days and years dynamically
  // (the months are always the same, therefore hardcoded)
  populateDays(monthSelect.value);
  populateYears();
}

function populateDays(month) {
  // delete the current set of <option> elements out of the
  // day <select>, ready for the next set to be injected
  while (daySelect.firstChild) {
    daySelect.removeChild(daySelect.firstChild);
  }

  // Create variable to hold new number of days to inject
  let dayNum;

  // 31 or 30 days?
  if (
    [
      "January",
      "March",
      "May",
      "July",
      "August",
      "October",
      "December",
    ].includes(month)
  ) {
    dayNum = 31;
  } else if (["April", "June", "September", "November"].includes(month)) {
    dayNum = 30;
  } else {
    // If month is February, calculate whether it is a leap year or not
    const year = yearSelect.value;
    const isLeap = new Date(year, 1, 29).getMonth() === 1;
    dayNum = isLeap ? 29 : 28;
  }

  // inject the right number of new <option> elements into the day <select>
  for (let i = 1; i <= dayNum; i++) {
    const option = document.createElement("option");
    option.textContent = i;
    daySelect.appendChild(option);
  }

  // if previous day has already been set, set daySelect's value
  // to that day, to avoid the day jumping back to 1 when you
  // change the year
  if (previousDay) {
    daySelect.value = previousDay;

    // If the previous day was set to a high number, say 31, and then
    // you chose a month with less total days in it (e.g. February),
    // this part of the code ensures that the highest day available
    // is selected, rather than showing a blank daySelect
    if (daySelect.value === "") {
      daySelect.value = previousDay - 1;
    }

    if (daySelect.value === "") {
      daySelect.value = previousDay - 2;
    }

    if (daySelect.value === "") {
      daySelect.value = previousDay - 3;
    }
  }
}

function populateYears() {
  // get this year as a number
  const date = new Date();
  const year = date.getFullYear();

  // Make this year, and the 100 years before it available in the year <select>
  for (let i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {
    const option = document.createElement("option");
    option.textContent = year - i;
    yearSelect.appendChild(option);
  }
}

// when the month or year <select> values are changed, rerun populateDays()
// in case the change affected the number of available days
yearSelect.onchange = () => {
  populateDays(monthSelect.value);
};

monthSelect.onchange = () => {
  populateDays(monthSelect.value);
};

//preserve day selection
let previousDay;

// update what day has been set to previously
// see end of populateDays() for usage
daySelect.onchange = () => {
  previousDay = daySelect.value;
};

• The generic <input> element and the interface used to manipulate it, HTMLInputElement
• Date and Time picker tutorial
• Date and time formats used in HTML
• Compatibility of CSS properties