HTMLModElement: dateTime property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The dateTime property of the HTMLModElement interface is a string containing a machine-readable date with an optional time value. It reflects the datetime HTML attribute of the <del> and <ins> elements.

Value

A string. For valid string formats, see the datetime valid values.

Examples

Given the following HTML:

html
<p>The paragraph <del datetime="2021-11-01">has been</del> changed</p>

We can get the value of the dateTime attribute of the <del> element:

js
const deletedText = document.querySelector("del");
console.log(deletedText.dateTime); // "2021-11-01"

We can also set the dateTime property. Here, we create an <ins> element, then set the dateTime property of the <ins> element to the current date in YYYY-MM-DD format then insert it after the deleted text:

js
const insertedText = document.createElement("ins");
const now = new Date();
insertedText.dateTime = `${now.getFullYear()}-${now.getMonth() + 1}-${now.getDate()}`;
insertedText.appendChild(document.createTextNode("was"));
deletedText.insertAdjacentElement("afterend", insertedText);

If our script ran on January 9, 2025, our HTML would be as follows:

html
<p>
  The paragraph <del datetime="2021-11-01">has been</del
  ><ins datetime="2025-1-9">was</ins> changed
</p>

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# dom-mod-datetime

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
dateTime

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support

See also