Flash CS3 Documentation

ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference > ActionScript classes > Date > Date constructor

Date constructor

Constructs a new Date object that holds the specified date and time.

The Date() constructor takes up to seven parameters (year, month, ..., millisecond) to specify a date and time to the millisecond. Alternatively, you can pass a single value to the Date() constructor that indicates a time value based on the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970 0:00:000 GMT. Or you can specify no parameters, and the Date() date object is assigned the current date and time.

For example, this code shows several different ways to create a Date object:

var d1:Date = new Date(); 
var d3:Date = new Date(2000, 0, 1);
var d4:Date = new Date(65, 2, 6, 9, 30, 15, 0);
var d5:Date = new Date(-14159025000);

In the first line of code, a Date object is set to the time when the assignment statement is run.

In the second line, a Date object is created with year, month, and date parameters passed to it, resulting in the time 0:00:00 GMT January 1, 2000.

In the third line, a Date object is created with year, month, and date parameters passed to it, resulting in the time 09:30:15 GMT (+ 0 milliseconds) March 6, 1965. Note that since the year parameter is specified as a two-digit integer, it is interpreted as 1965.

In the fourth line, only one parameter is passed, which is a time value representing the number of milliseconds before or after 0:00:00 GMT January 1, 1970; since the value is negative, it represents a time before 0:00:00 GMT January 1, 1970, and in this case the time is 02:56:15 GMT July, 21 1969.

Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 5

Parameters

yearOrTimevalue:Number [optional] - If other parameters are specified, this number represents a year (such as 1965); otherwise, it represents a time value. If the number represents a year, a value of 0 to 99 indicates 1900 through 1999; otherwise all four digits of the year must be specified. If the number represents a time value (no other parameters are specified), it is the number of milliseconds before or after 0:00:00 GMT January 1, 1970; a negative values represents a time before 0:00:00 GMT January 1, 1970, and a positive value represents a time after.

month:Number [optional] - An integer from 0 (January) to 11 (December).

date:Number [optional] - An integer from 1 to 31.

hour:Number [optional] - An integer from 0 (midnight) to 23 (11 p.m.).

minute:Number [optional] - An integer from 0 to 59.

second:Number [optional] - An integer from 0 to 59.

millisecond:Number [optional] - An integer from 0 to 999 of milliseconds.

Example

The following example retrieves the current date and time:

var now_date:Date = new Date();

The following example creates a new Date object for Mary's birthday, August 12, 1974 (because the month parameter is zero-based, the example uses 7 for the month, not 8):

var maryBirthday:Date = new Date (74, 7, 12); 

The following example creates a new Date object and concatenates the returned values of Date.getMonth(), Date.getDate(), and Date.getFullYear():

var today_date:Date = new Date();
var date_str:String = ((today_date.getMonth()+1)+"/"+today_date.getDate()+"/"+today_date.getFullYear());
trace(date_str); // displays current date in United States date format

See also

getMonth (Date.getMonth method), getDate (Date.getDate method), getFullYear (Date.getFullYear method)

Flash CS3