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Comment by nkrisc

18 hours ago

Is 03/04/2026 March 4th or the 3rd of April?

If you have an international audience that’s going to mess someone up.

Better yet require YYYY-MM-DD.

16 comments

nkrisc

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RobotToaster  17 hours ago

<input type="date"> is automatically formatted based on the user's locale.

  • suzzer99  11 hours ago

    Input type=date also just saves the day, month and year with no timezone information, which makes sense since the widget doesn't show any and context determines if the date should be in the user's timezone or a fixed timezone (like an event start date or a flight departure). But if you don't immediately convert that date to an ISO date and instead save it to the DB as yyyymmdd, you're in for a world of hurt trying to display date/times throughout the site. I inherited a project like this and have spent countless hours wrestling with nightmare timezone issues.

  • 8organicbits  16 hours ago

    This is still a partial solution as the user needs to know that their locale is being used and know how their locale is configured to understand the format. This is most problematic on shared computers or kiosks, especially when traveling.

    • Skeime  42 minutes ago

      I think modern browsers are actually quite good here. They show a template in the form TT.MM.JJJJ for me (so the German equivalent of MM/DD/YYYY, with the usual order and separator in German). I can just type the date, including the dots if I want (they're just ignored; there would be extra points for moving me to the next component when typing "2.", but the world's not perfect). If I'm confused about the format, or want to see a calendar view, I can click on the calendar icon (also accessible via tab) and select a date there.

      For normal date inputs, I really don't think there is a good reason to use anything else. (Possible exceptions I can think of: Selecting date ranges and/or showing extra data about the dates (like daily prices).)

    • stephbook  16 hours ago

      I don't even know my locale.

      Is is the device display language, the keyboard input language, my geo location, my browser language, my legal location, my browser-preferred website language, the language I set last time, the language of the domain (looking at amazon.co.uk), the language that was auto-selected last time for me on mobile or... something else entirely?

    • embedding-shape  15 hours ago

      I mean, once in a different country, you either experience the locale shock once then adapt, or you've seen it before and kind of know what to expect.

      And for the rest of the users who have no idea about locales, using whatever locale they have on their computer might be technically incorrect for some of them, but at least they're somewhat used to that incorrectness already, as it's likely been their locale for a while and will remain so.

      1 reply →

anamexis  17 hours ago

Or:

- Use localization context to show the right order for the user

- Display context to the user that makes obvious what the order is

- Show the month name during/immediately after input so the user can verify

JoeyJoJoJr  7 hours ago

A partial solution is to put DD/MM/YYYY (or the appropriate format) as the input placeholder. You could also display the format as a tooltip when the input field is focused. IMO this is better than dealing with date pickers.

hn_throwaway_99  14 hours ago

> Better yet require YYYY-MM-DD

This is the equivalent of requiring all your text to be in Esperanto because dealing with separate languages is a pain.

"Normal" people never use YYYY-MM-DD format. The real world has actual complexity, tough, and the reason you see so many bugs and problems around localization is not that there aren't good APIs to deal with it, it's that it's often an after thought, doesn't always provide economic payoff, and any individual developer is usually focused on making sure it "looks good" I'm whatever locale they're familiar with.

andai  18 hours ago

I've seen some that had a drop-down for the month name. But since it was native, I could type the month name and my browser selected the right one.

JoshTriplett  12 hours ago

As they type it, start displaying what it is. If, as you type "03/", it says "March", and that's not what you want, you now know what format it wants.

(And yes, always accept YYYY-MM-DD format, please.)

  • masswerk  9 hours ago

    Ah, the MS Word experience:

    User enters German date "1. April"

    MS Word: new ordered list with item "April"

    User furiously hits delete key.