Using JSON.parse() with date fields?

Question

Let's say you have the following object as a string:

var timecard = {
  "name": "Joe",
  "time": "Sun Apr 26 2015 13:58:54 GMT-0400 (EDT)"
} 

// as string
var stringed = 'var timecard = {   "name": "Joe",   "time": "Sun Apr 26 2015 13:58:54 GMT-0400 (EDT)" }'

and you run JSON.parse(stringed) to parse it into the object. How would you go about having it convert the date into an actual Date object as opposed to a string?

Thanks!

I think the declaration and assignment of stringed should be JSON.stringify(timecard) — user2182349
– user2182349, Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 18:03

Quentin · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-26 18:07:59Z

5

The JSON data format doesn't have a date type, so you have to write the code to transform it into a Date object yourself.

You can pass a reviver function as the second argument to JSON.parse to do that.

    function parseDate(k, v) {
      if (k === "time") {
        return new Date(v);
      }
      return v;
    }
    var json = '{   "name": "Joe",   "time": "Sun Apr 26 2015 13:58:54 GMT-0400 (EDT)" }';
    var data = JSON.parse(json, parseDate);
    console.log(data);

answered Apr 26, 2015 at 18:07

Quentin

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2 Comments

Jim Marcus Over a year ago

What if you do not have the time variable name available? ie. its a JS library for parsing objects

Quentin Over a year ago

@JimMarcus — Then you have to use some other method to determine which fields you want to convert to dates. e.g. you could write a "Looks like a date" regular expression, or try to convert everything to dates and see what is converted successfully.

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