Date

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 HTTP Date request and response header contains the date and time at which the message originated.

Header type Request header, Response header
Forbidden header name Yes

Syntax

http
Date: <day-name>, <day> <month> <year> <hour>:<minute>:<second> GMT

Directives

<day-name>

One of Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, or Sun (case-sensitive).

<day>

2 digit day number, e.g., "04" or "23".

<month>

One of Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec (case sensitive).

<year>

4 digit year number, e.g., "1990" or "2016".

<hour>

2 digit hour number, e.g., "09" or "23".

<minute>

2 digit minute number, e.g., "04" or "59".

<second>

2 digit second number, e.g., "04" or "59".

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time. HTTP dates are always expressed in GMT, never in local time.

Examples

Response with a Date header

The following HTTP message is a successful 200 status, with a Date header showing the time the message originated. Other headers are omitted for brevity:

http
HTTP/1.1 200
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:56:32 GMT

<html lang="en-US" …

Attempting to set the field value in JavaScript

The Date header is a forbidden header name, so this code cannot set the message Date field:

js
fetch("https://httpbin.org/get", {
  headers: {
    Date: new Date().toUTCString(),
  },
});

Specifications

Specification
HTTP Semantics
# field.date

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
Date

Legend

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

Full support
Full support

See also