Is there any way to change input type="date" format?

Question

I'm working with HTML5 elements on my webpage. By default input type="date" shows date as YYYY-MM-DD.

The question is, is it possible to change its format to something like: DD-MM-YYYY?

Answer 1

It is impossible to change the format

We have to differentiate between the over the wire format and the browser's presentation format.

Wire format

The HTML5 date input specification refers to the RFC 3339 specification, which specifies a full-date format equal to: yyyy-mm-dd. See section 5.6 of the RFC 3339 specification for more details.

This format is used by the value HTML attribute and DOM property and is the one used when doing an ordinary form submission.

Presentation format

Browsers are unrestricted in how they present a date input. At the time of writing Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera have date support (see here). They all display a date picker and format the text in the input field.

Desktop devices

For Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, the formatting of the input field's text is based on the browser's language setting. For Edge, it is based on the Windows language setting. Sadly, all web browsers ignore the date formatting configured in the operating system. To me this is very strange behaviour, and something to consider when using this input type. For example, Dutch users that have their operating system or browser language set to en-us will be shown 01/30/2019 instead of the format they are accustomed to: 30-01-2019.

Internet Explorer 9, 10, and 11 display a text input field with the wire format.

Mobile devices

Specifically for Chrome on Android, the formatting is based on the Android display language. I suspect that the same is true for other browsers, though I've not been able to verify this.

Answer 2

Since this question was asked quite a few things have happened in the web realm, and one of the most exciting is the landing of web components. Now you can solve this issue elegantly with a custom HTML5 element designed to suit your needs. If you wish to override/change the workings of any html tag just build yours playing with the shadow dom.

The good news is that there’s already a lot of boilerplate available so most likely you won’t need to come up with a solution from scratch. Just check what people are building and get ideas from there.

You can start with a simple (and working) solution like datetime-input for polymer that allows you to use a tag like this one:

 <date-input date="{{date}}" timezone="[[timezone]]"></date-input> 

or you can get creative and pop-up complete date-pickers styled as you wish, with the formatting and locales you desire, callbacks, and your long list of options (you’ve got a whole custom API at your disposal!)

Standards-compliant, no hacks.

Double-check the available polyfills, what browsers/versions they support, and if it covers enough % of your user base… It's 2018, so chances are it'll surely cover most of your users.

Hope it helps!