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javascriptnode.jsdate-fns

How to use date-fns in a Node.js project?

I installed date-fns as per the following instruction on https://www.npmjs.com/package/date-fns

npm install date-fns --save

After that my package.json is updated with the following entry:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "date-fns": "^2.23.0"
  }
}

Then, I wrote the following code from https://date-fns.org/ and it resulted in error:

import { format, formatDistance, formatRelative, subDays } from 'date-fns'

format(new Date(), "'Today is a' eeee")

Error:

import { format, formatDistance, formatRelative, subDays } from 'date-fns'
       ^

SyntaxError: Unexpected token {
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:703:23)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:770:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:628:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:555:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:822:10)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:11

[Done] exited with code=1 in 0.143 seconds

node -v:

v12.2.0

enter image description here

Solution

  • I managed to run it successfully by using require as shown below:

    const fns = require('date-fns')

console.log(fns.format(new Date(), "'Today is a' eeee"))

    Update:

    I installed node v16.6.1 following the instructions in this answer and now I can run the following code successfully:

    import { format } from 'date-fns';

console.log(format(new Date(), "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS"));