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Update: Here in 2021, Date.js hasn't been maintained in years and is not recommended, and Moment.js is in "maintenance only" mode. We have the built-in Intl.DateTimeFormat , Intl.RelativeTimeFormat , and (soon) Temporal instead, probably best to use those. Some useful links are linked from Moment's page on entering maintenance mode .

Old Answer:

Probably best to use a library like Date.js (although that hasn't been maintained in years) or Moment.js .

But to do it manually, you can use Date#getFullYear() , Date#getMonth() (it starts with 0 = January, so you probably want + 1), and Date#getDate() (day of month). Just pad out the month and day to two characters, e.g.:

(function() {
    Date.prototype.toYMD = Date_toYMD;
    function Date_toYMD() {
        var year, month, day;
        year = String(this.getFullYear());
        month = String(this.getMonth() + 1);
        if (month.length == 1) {
            month = "0" + month;
        day = String(this.getDate());
        if (day.length == 1) {
            day = "0" + day;
        return year + "-" + month + "-" + day;
})();
Usage:
var dt = new Date();
var str = dt.toYMD();
Note that the function has a name, which is useful for debugging purposes, but because of the anonymous scoping function there's no pollution of the global namespace.
That uses local time; for UTC, just use the UTC versions (getUTCFullYear, etc.).
Caveat: I just threw that out, it's completely untested.
                MomentJS also now "a legacy project" in their own words momentjs.com/docs/#/-project-status so best is actually to directly use Date.
– Jim Driscoll
                Dec 28, 2021 at 11:12
const date = new Date();
const myDate = date.toISOString().replace("T", " ");
const myDateString = myDate.substring(0, myDate.length - 5);
console.log(myDateString);
                There are quite a few things wrong here. Do not redeclare var. Read about "hoisting". Furthermore, this is sufficient, new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10).
– Gajus
                Dec 1, 2013 at 12:00
                @Gajus for me Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10) was  not sufficient fails with several dates - wrong by 1 day for 7th June 1979 for instance
– Tin Bum
                Mar 10, 2014 at 1:45
                -1 when you use toISOString() you are converting the date from the timezone shown into UTC time.  So for example if the web page you are looking at is on GMT-6 and showing a GMT-6 time and your browser is running on a computer that is GMT-5 then when you use toISOString() you will now have a UTC time that 5 hours off the webpage instead of 6
– gillyspy
                Jul 22, 2014 at 15:47
A bit of a typo in the first example, when a day has a length less than 1 it is adding the month instead of the day to the result.  
Works great though if you change:
    if (day.length == 1) {
        day = "0" + month;
    if (day.length == 1) {
        day = "0" + day;
Thanks for posting that script.
The corrected function looks like:
Date.prototype.toYMD = Date_toYMD;
function Date_toYMD() {
    var year, month, day;
    year = String(this.getFullYear());
    month = String(this.getMonth() + 1);
    if (month.length == 1) {
        month = "0" + month;
    day = String(this.getDate());
    if (day.length == 1) {
        day = "0" + day;
    return year + "-" + month + "-" + day;
I needed this for a filename and with the time in the current timezone.
const timezoneOffset = (new Date()).getTimezoneOffset() * 60000;
const date = (new Date(Date.now() - timezoneOffset))
    .toISOString()
    .substring(0, 19)
    .replace('T', '')       // replace T with a space
    .replace(/ /g, "_")     // replace spaces with an underscore
    .replace(/\:/g, ".");   // replace colons with a dot
Source
convert-javascript-to-date-object-to-mysql-date-format-yyyy-mm-dd
javascript-toisostring-ignores-timezone-offset
I'd like to say that this is likely the best way of going about it. Just confirmed that it works:
new Date().toISOString().replace('T', ' ').split('Z')[0];
// function
getDate = function(dateObj){
    var day = dateObj.getDay() < 9 ? '0'+dateObj.getDay():dateObj.getDay();
    var month = dateObj.getMonth() < 9 ? '0'+dateObj.getMonth():dateObj.getMonth();
    return dateObj.getFullYear()+'-'+month+'-'+day;
// example usage
console.log(getDate(new Date()));
// with custom date
console.log(getDate(new Date(2012,dateObj.getMonth()-30,dateObj.getDay()));
      year = d.getFullYear(),
      hours = d.getHours().toString(),
      minutes = d.getMinutes().toString(),
      secs = d.getSeconds().toString();
    if (month.length < 2) month = '0' + month;
    if (day.length < 2) day = '0' + day;
    if (hours.length < 2) hours = '0' + hours;
    if (minutes.length < 2) minutes = '0' + minutes;
    if (secs.length < 2) secs = '0' + secs;
    return [year, month, day].join('-') + ' ' + [hours, minutes, secs].join(':');
Note that you can remove the hours, minutes and seconds and you will have the result as YYYY-MM-DD
The advantage is that the datetime entered in the HTML form remains the same: no transformation into UTC
The result will be (for your example) :
dateToMYSQL(datx) {
    var d = new Date(datx),
      month = '' + (d.getMonth() + 1),
      day = d.getDate().toString(),
      year = d.getFullYear();
    if (month.length < 2) month = '0' + month;
    if (day.length < 2) day = '0' + day;
    return [year, month, day].join('-');
        
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