Overview – Formatting Date & Time Values

CanvasJS allows you to format Date and Time values according to your preference as JavaScript doesn’t have native support for the same.

For a given date Date(2016, 07, 15, 10, 30) that is 15 August 2016 10:30 AM below are some of the format strings and how the result looks.

Value Format String Result – Formatted Date
hh:mm TT 10:30 AM
DD MMM 15 Aug
DD-MM-YY 15-08-16
DDD HH:mm:ss Mon 10:30:00
DD MMMM YYYY 15 August 2016
DDDD MMM YYYY HH:mm:ss k Monday Aug 2015 10:30:00 GMT+0530
D’th’ MMMM hh:mm tt 15th August 10:30 am
‘Morning’ hh ‘hour’ mm ‘minute’ Morning 10 hour 30 minute

Below is a table that lists down custom date and time specifiers with their Description.

Format Specifier Description Examples
“D” The day of the month, from 1 through 31. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 3
Sun Feb 15 2013 22:04:49 -> 15
“DD” The day of the month, from 01 through 31. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 03
Sun Feb 15 2013 22:04:49 -> 15
“DDD” The abbreviated name of the day of the week. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> Sun
“DDDD” The full name of the day of the week. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> Sunday
“M” The month, from 1 through 12. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 2
“MM” The month, from 01 through 12. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 02
“MMM” The abbreviated name of the month. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> Feb
“MMMM” The full name of the month. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> February
“Y” The year, from 0 to 99. Sun Feb 03 2003 22:04:49 -> 3
Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 13
“YY” The year, from 00 to 99. Sun Feb 03 2003 22:04:49 -> 03
Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 13
“YYY” The year, with a minimum of three digits. Sun Feb 03 1999 22:04:49 -> 999
Sun Feb 03 2003 22:04:49 -> 003
Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 013
“YYYY” The year as a four-digit number. Sun Feb 03 2003 22:04:49 -> 2003
Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 2013
“h” The hour, using a 12-hour clock from 1 to 12. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 10
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:04:49 -> 2
“hh” The hour, using a 12-hour clock from 01 to 12. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 10
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:04:49 -> 02
“H” The hour, using a 24-hour clock from 0 to 23. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 22
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:04:49 -> 2
“HH” The hour, using a 24-hour clock from 00 to 23. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 22
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:04:49 -> 02
“m” The minute, from 0 through 59. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 4
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> 34
“mm” The minute, from 00 through 59. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 -> 04
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> 34
“s” The second, from 0 through 59. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:09 -> 9
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> 49
“ss” The second, from 00 through 59. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:09 -> 09
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> 49
“f” The value of hundredth millisecond. Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49.237 -> 2
“ff” The value of hundredth and tenth millisecond. Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49.237 -> 23
“fff” The value of milliseconds in three digits. Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49.237 -> 237
“t” The first character of the am/pm designator. (lower case) Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:09 -> p
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> a
“tt” The am/pm designator. (lower case) Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:09 -> pm
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> am
“T” The first character of the AM/PM designator. (upper case) Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:09 -> P
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> A
“TT” The AM/PM designator. (upper case) Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:09 -> PM
Sun Feb 03 2013 02:34:49 -> AM
“K” Time zone information. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 GMT+0530 -> GMT +0530
“z” Hours offset from UTC, with no leading zeros. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 GMT+0530 -> +5
“zz” Hours offset from UTC, with a leading zero for a single-digit value. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 GMT+0530 -> +05
“zzz” Hours and minutes offset from UTC. Sun Feb 03 2013 22:04:49 GMT+0530 -> +0530
“string”
‘string’		 Literal string delimiter. Sun Feb 03 2003 22:04:49 (‘Morning’ D) -> Morning 3
Any other character The character is copied to the result string unchanged. Sun Feb 03 2003 22:04:49 (“val h:mm”) -> val 10:04

In The next example we are providing input to x as Date Object, try various specifers in valueFormatString inside axisX.

Try Editing The Code


Custom Label Formatting

If you need more flexibility while formatting dates, you can write your own labelFormatter callback function for axisX. In this case utility function like formatNumber and formatDate can come handy.

Try Editing The Code
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13 Comments

  1. Carlos Cortes says:

    Hi there,
    I found there is a bug in your javascript. A date value for the axisX datapoint. The month part is being shifted by one. For example (x:new Date(2012, 06, 15) is displayed in the graph as “15-Jul”. It should be “15-Jun”.

    Are you able to fix this bug. We purchased your Canvasjs component and would like this to be fixed.

    Thanks,
    Carlos
    Lee Valley Tools.

  2. Michael says:

    Could it be possible to specify a callback function for date formatting?

    In the past I have used the php plotting library “phplot” and its possibility to pass such a function. That makes it possible to have different date formats inside the same chart, e.g.:
    Normally only show the time; at date changes, show the date, too.

    As far as I understand these docs, you can’t achieve this behavior with CanvasJS by now, right?

  5. Mikko Jokinen says:

    I cannot get the hours and minutes date formatting working. I’m trying to get the following date

    x: new Date(2016, 03, 03, 9, 10, 0, 0)

    I.e. Sun Apr 03 2016 09:10:00.0

    shown as only the time part i.e. “09:10”. I’m using the below for this:
    chart.options.axisX = { valueFormatString: “HH-mm”};

    but get only “00-00” as a result shown. What is wrong here?

    • Vishwas R says:

      Mikko,
      We were unable to reproduce your issue. As we checked, its working fine. Can you kindly create a jsfiddle, so that we can help you out.

      • Mikko Jokinen says:

        I got the problem solved. HH-mm now working ok. The only thing that I changed was the x-coordinate name in my dataPoint object. See below. For some reason, after this the axisX-formatting started to work ok.

        ORIGINAL:
        function dataPoint(label, y)
        {
        this.label = label;
        this.y = y;
        }

        CHANGED TO:
        function dataPoint(x, y)
        {
        this.x = x;
        this.y = y;
        }

  6. Luc says:

    Hello,
    I can’t apply the valueFormatString in the toolTip. Is there a way to do that?
    Thank you

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in our forums. Ask Question