How to format a JavaScript date

For custom-delimited date formats, you have to pull out the date (or time) components from a DateTimeFormat object (which is part of the ECMAScript Internationalization API), and then manually create a string with the delimiters you want.

To do this, you can use DateTimeFormat#formatToParts. You could destructure the array, but that is not ideal, as the array output depends on the locale:

{ // example 1
   let f = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en');
   let a = f.formatToParts();
   console.log(a);
}
{ // example 2
   let f = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('hi');
   let a = f.formatToParts();
   console.log(a);
}

 Run code snippet

Better would be to map a format array to resultant strings:

function join(t, a, s) {
   function format(m) {
      let f = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en', m);
      return f.format(t);
   }
   return a.map(format).join(s);
}

let a = [{day: 'numeric'}, {month: 'short'}, {year: 'numeric'}];
let s = join(new Date, a, '-');
console.log(s);

 Run code snippet

You can also pull out the parts of a DateTimeFormat one-by-one using DateTimeFormat#format, but note that when using this method, as of March 2020, there is a bug in the ECMAScript implementation when it comes to leading zeros on minutes and seconds (this bug is circumvented by the approach above).

let d = new Date(2010, 7, 5);
let ye = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en', { year: 'numeric' }).format(d);
let mo = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en', { month: 'short' }).format(d);
let da = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en', { day: '2-digit' }).format(d);
console.log(`${da}-${mo}-${ye}`);

 Run code snippet

When working with dates and times, it is usually worth using a library (eg. moment.js, luxon) because of the many hidden complexities of the field.

Note that the ECMAScript Internationalization API, used in the solutions above is not supported in IE10 (0.03% global browser market share in Feb 2020).