> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://attr.sygnal.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://attr.sygnal.com/sa5-format/format-dates/setup-your-date-field-for-good-parsing.md).

# Setup Your Date Field for Good Parsing

This module is built on top of day.js, which is the recognized standard for JS date-time formatting. It parses your current date content automatically, and handles the formatting, date math, and localization as well. 

Unfortunately dates are not globally standard- a common example is month-day-year vs. day-month-year conventions that different countries have. 

{% hint style="warning" %}
Does 01-03-2025 mean Jan 3rd, or March 1st?  *It depends on where you are.* 
{% endhint %}

## Best Practices 

To ensure that day.js is parsing the date correctly, the best practice is to use an international convention close to ISO8601.  

{% hint style="success" %}
ISO8601 uses a YMD convention, e.g. 2025-03-01, which will always be able to parse as March 1st, 2025. 
{% endhint %}

We highly recommend that you use this convention to ensure good parsing. 

For CMS-stored dates, Webflow offers a range of formats.  The best date format for this is halfway down the list and is shown here. 

Use either...

* YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm 
* or YYYY-MM-DD 

{% hint style="success" %}
The first option works for all uses you might have.  The second works if you do not care about the time portion. 
{% endhint %}

<figure><img src="/files/GI6SORQS8SL858cxa87t" alt=""><figcaption><p>Ideally use this date format to ensure correct datetime parsing. </p></figcaption></figure>