# How to get the current day, month, and year in Node.js

By Atta Ur Rehman Shah (https://attacomsian.com/about). Published Nov 24, 2020, updated Oct 1, 2022. Topics: Node.js.
Canonical URL: https://attacomsian.com/blog/nodejs-get-current-date-month-year

> A quick guide to learn how to get the current day, month, and year in a Node.js application.

Since Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment, you can use the `Date` object methods `getDate()`, `getMonth()`, and `getFullYear()` to get the current day, month, and year in a Node.js application.

To create a new `Date` object, just call its constructor like below:

```javascript
const today = new Date()
// 2020-11-24T10:20:14.782Z
```

Now you can call the `getDate()`, `getMonth()`, and `getFullYear()` methods on `today` to get the current date, month, and year in Node.js:

```javascript
const day = today.getDate()        // 24
const month = today.getMonth()     // 10 (Month is 0-based, so 10 means 11th Month)
const year = today.getFullYear()   // 2020
```

Note that `getDate()`, `getMonth()`, and `getFullYear()` return date and time in local timezone of the computer that the script is running on.

If you want to get the date, month, and year in the universal timezone (UTC), use `getUTCDate()`, `getUTCMonth()`, and `getUTCFullYear()`, as shown in the following example:

```javascript
const utcDay = today.getUTCDate()        // 24
const utcMonth = today.getUTCMonth()     // 10 (UTC Month is also 0-based)
const utcYear = today.getUTCFullYear()   // 2020
```

The `Date` object also provides methods to get time components like hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds in the local timezone as well as in the universal timezone (UTC), as shown below:

```javascript
const hours = today.getHours()         // 15 (0-23)
const minutes = today.getMinutes()     // 20 (0-59)
const seconds = today.getSeconds()     // 14 (0-59)
const millis = today.getMilliseconds() // 782 (0-999)

// UTC Time
const utcHours = today.getHours()         // 10 (0-23)
const utcMinutes = today.getMinutes()     // 20 (0-59)
const utcSeconds = today.getSeconds()     // 14 (0-59)
const utcMillis = today.getMilliseconds() // 782 (0-999)
```