<input type="date"> HTML attribute value

Try it

<label for="start">Start date:</label>

<input type="date" id="start" name="trip-start" value="2018-07-22" min="2018-01-01" max="2018-12-31">

label {
  display: block;
  font:
    1rem "Fira Sans",
    sans-serif;
}

input,
label {
  margin: 0.4rem 0;
}

Value

A string representing the date entered in the input. The date is formatted according to Date strings format.

You can set a default value for the input with a date inside the value attribute, like so:

<input type="date" value="2017-06-01" />

You can get and set the date value in JavaScript with the HTMLInputElement value and valueAsNumber properties. For example:

const dateControl = document.querySelector('input[type="date"]');
dateControl.value = "2017-06-01";
console.log(dateControl.value); // prints "2017-06-01"
console.log(dateControl.valueAsNumber); // prints 1496275200000, a JavaScript timestamp (ms)

This code finds the first <input> element whose type is date, and sets its value to 2017-06-01 (June 1st, 2017). It then reads that value back in string and number formats.

Additional attributes

In addition to global attributes and the input attributes common to all <input> elements, the date input supports the following attributes:

max

The latest date to accept. If the value entered into the element occurs afterward, the element fails constraint validation. If the value of the max attribute isn't a possible date string in the format yyyy-mm-dd, then the element has no maximum date value.

If both the max and min attributes are set, this value must be a date string later than or equal to the one in the min attribute.

min

The earliest date to accept. If the value entered into the element occurs beforehand, the element fails constraint validation. If the value of the min attribute isn't a possible date string in the format yyyy-mm-dd, then the element has no minimum date value.

If both the max and min attributes are set, this value must be a date string earlier than or equal to the one in the max attribute.

step

The step attribute is a number that specifies the granularity that the value must adhere to, or the special value any, which is described below. Only values which are a whole number of steps from the step base are valid. The step base is min if specified, value otherwise, or 0 (the Unix epoch, 1970-01-01) if neither is provided.

For date inputs, the value of step is given in days and is treated as a number of milliseconds equal to 86,400,000 times the step value (the underlying numeric value is in milliseconds). The default value is 1, indicating 1 day.

A string value of any means that no stepping is implied, and any value is allowed (barring other constraints, such as min and max). In reality, it has the same effect as 1 for date inputs because the picker UI only allows selecting whole days.

Using date inputs

Date inputs provide an easy interface for choosing dates, and they normalize the data format sent to the server regardless of the user's locale.

In this section, we'll look at basic and then more complex uses of <input type="date">.

Basic uses of date

The most basic use of <input type="date"> involves one <input> combined with its <label>, as seen below:

<form action="https://example.com">
  <label>
    Enter your birthday:
    <input type="date" name="bday" />
  </label>

  <p><button>Submit</button></p>
</form>

This HTML submits the entered date under the key bday to https://example.com — resulting in a URL like https://example.com/?bday=1955-06-08.

Setting maximum and minimum dates

You can use the min and max attributes to restrict the dates that can be chosen by the user. In the following example, we set a minimum date of 2017-04-01 and a maximum date of 2017-04-30:

<form>
  <label>
    Choose your preferred party date:
    <input type="date" name="party" min="2017-04-01" max="2017-04-30" />
  </label>
</form>

The result is that only days in April 2017 can be selected — the month and year parts of the textbox will be uneditable, and dates outside April 2017 can't be selected in the picker widget.

You can use the step attribute to vary the number of days jumped each time the date is incremented (e.g., to only make Saturdays selectable).

Controlling input size

<input type="date"> doesn't support form sizing attributes such as size. Prefer CSS for sizing it.

Validation

By default, <input type="date"> doesn't validate the entered value beyond its format. The interfaces generally don't let you enter anything that isn't a date — which is helpful.

If you use min and max to restrict the available dates (see Setting maximum and minimum dates), the form control disables invalid dates, and will display an error if you try to submit a date that is out of bounds.

You can also use the required attribute to make filling in the date mandatory — an error will be displayed if you try to submit an empty date field.

Let's look at an example of minimum and maximum dates, and also make a field required:

<form>
  <label>
    Choose your preferred party date (required, April 1st to 20th):
    <input
      type="date"
      name="party"
      min="2017-04-01"
      max="2017-04-20"
      required />
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </label>

  <p>
    <button>Submit</button>
  </p>
</form>

If you try to submit the form with an incomplete date (or with a date outside the set bounds), the browser displays an error. Try playing with the example now:

Here's the CSS used in the above example. We make use of the :valid and :invalid pseudo-elements to add an icon next to the input, based on whether the current value is valid. We had to put the icon on a <span> next to the input, not on the input itself, because in Chrome at least the input's generated content is placed inside the form control, and can't be styled or shown effectively.

label {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
}

span::after {
  padding-left: 5px;
}

input:invalid + span::after {
  content: "✖";
}

input:valid + span::after {
  content: "✓";
}

Examples

In this example, we create a date picker using the native <input type="date"> picker.

HTML

The HTML looks like so:

<form>
  <div class="nativeDatePicker">
    <label for="bday">Enter your birthday:</label>
    <input type="date" id="bday" name="bday" />
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
</form>

CSS

The CSS looks like so:

input:invalid + span::after {
  content: " ✖";
}

input:valid + span::after {
  content: " ✓";
}

Results

Technical summary

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• The generic <input> element and the interface used to manipulate it, HTMLInputElement
• Date and Time picker tutorial
• Date and time formats used in HTML