👀 Views: 0 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-09-09

react node.js date-fns api parsing JavaScript

I keep running into I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. Part of a larger system involves integrating with an external API that returns dates in varying string formats, including ISO 8601 and custom formats with time zone information... In my React frontend, I'm using `date-fns` for date manipulation but running into inconsistencies when parsing these dates. The API responses can come in a format like `2023-10-05T14:30:00Z` or `October 5, 2023 2:30 PM GMT+2`. Here's a snippet of what I've tried: ```javascript import { parseISO, format } from 'date-fns'; const parseDate = (dateString) => { return parseISO(dateString); }; const formattedDate = parseDate('2023-10-05T14:30:00Z'); console.log(format(formattedDate, 'MMMM dd, yyyy')); // Expect: October 05, 2023 ``` However, for the custom formatted date string, `parseISO` doesn’t handle it correctly, resulting in `Invalid Date`. To handle this, I attempted to create a custom parser: ```javascript const customParseDate = (dateString) => { const options = { timeZone: 'GMT', hour12: false }; return new Date(Date.parse(dateString)); }; const customFormattedDate = customParseDate('October 5, 2023 2:30 PM GMT+2'); console.log(format(customFormattedDate, 'MMMM dd, yyyy')); // Expect: October 05, 2023 ``` What I'm finding is that the parsing fails when the timezone offset isn’t handled correctly. Any suggestions on a more robust way to parse these dates consistently across the application? I've looked into libraries like `moment-timezone`, but I'm hesitant about adding a large dependency just for date parsing. Is there a lightweight solution that can handle both standard and custom formats effectively? I'm working in a Windows 11 environment. This is my first time working with Javascript 3.11. Cheers for any assistance! I've been using Javascript for about a year now. Cheers for any assistance!