<label for="start">Start month:</label><input type="month" name="start" min="2018-03" value="2018-05" />

label {  display: block;  font:    1rem "Fira Sans",    sans-serif;}input,label {  margin: 0.4rem 0;}

The control's UI varies in general from browser to browser; at the moment support is patchy, with only Chrome/Opera and Edge on desktop — and most modern mobile browser versions — having usable implementations.In browsers that don't supportmonth inputs, the control degrades gracefully to<input type="text">, although there may be automatic validation of the entered text to ensure it's formatted as expected.

For those of you using a browser that doesn't supportmonth, the screenshot below shows what it looks like in Chrome and Opera.Clicking the down arrow on the right-hand side brings up a date picker that lets you select the month and year.

The Microsoft Edgemonth control looks like this:

A string representing the value of the month and year entered into the input, in the form YYYY-MM (four or more digit year, then a hyphen (-), followed by the two-digit month).The format of the month string used by this input type is described inMonth strings.

You can set a default value for the input control by including a month and year inside thevalue attribute, like so:

<label for="bday-month">What month were you born in?</label><input type="month" name="bday-month" value="2001-06" />

One thing to note is that the displayed date format differs from the actualvalue; mostuser agents display the month and year in a locale-appropriate form, based on the set locale of the user's operating system, whereas the datevalue is always formattedyyyy-MM.

When the above value is submitted to the server, for example, it will look likebday-month=1978-06.

You can also get and set the date value in JavaScript using theHTMLInputElement.value property, for example:

<label for="bday-month">What month were you born in?</label><input type="month" name="bday-month" />

const monthControl = document.querySelector('input[type="month"]');monthControl.value = "2001-06";

In addition to the attributes common to<input> elements, month inputs offer the following attributes.

The values of the list attribute is theid of a<datalist> element located in the same document.The<datalist> provides a list of predefined values to suggest to the user for this input.Any values in the list that are not compatible with thetype are not included in the suggested options.The values provided are suggestions, not requirements: users can select from this predefined list or provide a different value.

The latest year and month, in the string format discussed in theValue section above, to accept.If thevalue entered into the element exceeds this, the element failsconstraint validation.If the value of themax attribute isn't a valid string inyyyy-MM format, then the element has no maximum value.

This value must specify a year-month pairing later than or equal to the one specified by themin attribute.

The earliest year and month to accept, in the sameyyyy-MM format described above.If thevalue of the element is less than this, the element failsconstraint validation.If a value is specified formin that isn't a valid year and month string, the input has no minimum value.

This value must be a year-month pairing which is earlier than or equal to the one specified by themax attribute.

A Boolean attribute which, if present, means this field cannot be edited by the user.Itsvalue can, however, still be changed from JavaScript code that directly sets the value of theHTMLInputElement.value property.

Thestep attribute is a number that specifies the granularity that the value must adhere to, or the special valueany, which is described below.Only values which are equal to the basis for stepping (min if specified,value otherwise, and an appropriate default value if neither of those is provided) are valid.

A string value ofany means that no stepping is implied, and any value is allowed (barring other constraints, such asmin andmax).

Formonth inputs, the value ofstep is given in months, with a scaling factor of 1 (since the underlying numeric value is also in months).The default value ofstep is 1 month.

Date-related inputs (includingmonth) sound convenient at first glance; they promise an easy UI for choosing dates, and they normalize the data format sent to the server, regardless of the user's locale.However, there are issues with<input type="month"> because at this time, many major browsers don't yet support it.

We'll look at basic and more complex uses of<input type="month">, then offer advice on mitigating the browser support issue in the sectionHandling browser support).

The most basic use of<input type="month"> involves a basic<input> and<label> element combination, as seen below:

<form>  <label for="bday-month">What month were you born in?</label>  <input type="month" name="bday-month" /></form>

You can use themin andmax attributes to restrict the range of dates that the user can choose.In the following example we specify a minimum month of1900-01 and a maximum month of2013-12:

<form>  <label for="bday-month">What month were you born in?</label>  <input       type="month"    name="bday-month"    min="1900-01"    max="2013-12" /></form>

The result here is that:

• Only months between in January 1900 and December 2013 can be selected; months outside that range can't be scrolled to in the control.
• Depending on what browser you are using, you might find that months outside the specified range might not be selectable in the month picker (e.g., Edge), or invalid (seeValidation) but still available (e.g., Chrome).

<input type="month"> doesn't support form sizing attributes such assize.You'll have to resort toCSS for sizing needs.

By default,<input type="month"> does not apply any validation to entered values.The UI implementations generally don't let you enter anything that isn't a date — which is helpful — but you can still submit the form with themonth input empty, or enter an invalid date (e.g., the 32nd of April).

To help avoid this, you can usemin andmax to restrict the available dates (seeSetting maximum and minimum dates), and in addition use therequired attribute to make filling in the date mandatory.As a result, supporting browsers will display an error if you try to submit a date that is outside the set bounds, or an empty date field.

Let's look at an example; here we've set minimum and maximum dates, and also made the field required:

<form>  <div>    <label for="month">      What month would you like to visit (June to Sept.)?    </label>    <input           type="month"      name="month"      min="2022-06"      max="2022-09"      required />    <span></span>  </div>  <div>    <input type="submit" value="Submit form" />  </div></form>

If you try to submit the form without both the month and year specified (or with a date outside the set bounds), the browser displays an error.Try playing with the example now:

Here's a screenshot for those of you who aren't using a supporting browser:

Here's the CSS used in the above example.Here we make use of the:valid and:invalid CSS properties to style the input based on whether the current value is valid.We had to put the icons on a<span> next to the input, not on the input itself, because in Chrome the generated content is placed inside the form control, and can't be styled or shown effectively.

div {  margin-bottom: 10px;  position: relative;}input[type="number"] {  width: 100px;}input + span {  padding-right: 30px;}input:invalid + span::after {  position: absolute;  content: "✖";  padding-left: 5px;}input:valid + span::after {  position: absolute;  content: "✓";  padding-left: 5px;}

As mentioned above, the major problem with using date inputs at the time of writing is that many major browsers don't yet implement them all; only Chrome/Opera and Edge support it on desktop, and most modern browsers on mobile.As an example, themonth picker on Chrome for Android looks like this:

Non-supporting browsers gracefully degrade to a text input, but this creates problems both in terms of consistency of user interface (the presented control will be different), and data handling.

The second problem is the more serious of the two.As mentioned earlier, with amonth input the actual value is always normalized to the formatyyyy-mm.On the other hand, in its default configuration, atext input has no idea what format the date should be in, and this is an issue because of the number of different ways in which people write dates.For example:

• mmyyyy (072022)
• mm/yyyy (07/2022)
• mm-yyyy (07-2022)
• yyyy-mm (2022-07)
• Month yyyy (July 2022)
• and so forth…

One way around this is to put apattern attribute on yourmonth input.Even though themonth input doesn't use it, if the browser falls back to treating it like atext input, the pattern will be used.For example, try viewing the following demo in a browser that doesn't supportmonth inputs:

<form>  <div>    <label for="month">      What month would you like to visit (June to Sept.)?    </label>    <input           type="month"      name="month"      min="2022-06"      max="2022-09"      required      pattern="[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}" />    <span></span>  </div>  <div>    <input type="submit" value="Submit form" />  </div></form>

If you try submitting it, you'll see that the browser now displays an error message (and highlights the input as invalid) if your entry doesn't match the patternnnnn-nn, wheren is a number from 0 to 9.Of course, this doesn't stop people from entering invalid dates (such as0000-42), or incorrectly formatted dates that follow the pattern.

There's also the problem that the user won't necessarily know which of the many date formats is expected.We have work left to do.

div {  margin-bottom: 10px;  position: relative;}input[type="number"] {  width: 100px;}input + span {  padding-right: 30px;}input:invalid + span::after {  position: absolute;  content: "✖";  padding-left: 5px;}input:valid + span::after {  position: absolute;  content: "✓";  padding-left: 5px;}

The best way to deal with dates in forms in a cross-browser way (until all major browsers have supported them for a while) is to get the user to enter the month and year in separate controls (<select> elements being popular; see below for an implementation), or use JavaScript libraries such as thejQuery date picker plugin.

In this example, we create two sets of UI elements, each designed to let the user select a month and year.The first is a nativemonth input, and the other is a pair of<select> elements that allow choosing a month and year independently, for compatibility with browsers that don't yet support<input type="month">.

The form that requests the month and year looks like this:

<form>  <div>    <label for="month-visit">What month would you like to visit us?</label>    <input type="month" name="month-visit" />    <span></span>  </div>  <p>What month would you like to visit us?</p>  <div>    <div>      <span>        <label for="month">Month:</label>        <select name="month">          <option selected>January</option>          <option>February</option>          <option>March</option>          <option>April</option>          <option>May</option>          <option>June</option>          <option>July</option>          <option>August</option>          <option>September</option>          <option>October</option>          <option>November</option>          <option>December</option>        </select>      </span>      <span>        <label for="year">Year:</label>        <select name="year"></select>      </span>    </div>  </div></form>

The<div> with the IDnativeDatePicker uses themonth input type to request the month and year, while the<div> with the IDfallbackDatePicker instead uses a pair of<select> elements.The first requests the month, and the second the year.

The<select> for choosing the month is hardcoded with the names of the months, as they don't change (leaving localization out of things).The list of available year values is dynamically generated depending on the current year (see the code comments below for detailed explanations of how these functions work).

div {  margin-bottom: 10px;  position: relative;}input[type="number"] {  width: 100px;}input + span {  padding-right: 30px;}input:invalid + span::after {  position: absolute;  content: "✖";  padding-left: 5px;}input:valid + span::after {  position: absolute;  content: "✓";  padding-left: 5px;}

The JavaScript code that handles selecting which approach to use and to set up the list of years to include in the non-native year<select> follows.

The part of the example that may be of most interest is the feature detection code.In order to detect whether the browser supports<input type="month">, we create a new<input> element, try setting itstype tomonth, then immediately check what its type is set to.Browsers that don't support typemonth will returntext, since that's What month falls back to when not supported.If<input type="month"> is not supported, we hide the native picker and show the fallback picker UI instead.

// Get UI elementsconst nativePicker = document.querySelector(".nativeDatePicker");const fallbackPicker = document.querySelector(".fallbackDatePicker");const fallbackLabel = document.querySelector(".fallbackLabel");const yearSelect = document.querySelector("#year");const monthSelect = document.querySelector("#month");// Hide fallback initiallyfallbackPicker.style.display = "none";fallbackLabel.style.display = "none";// Test whether a new date input falls back to a text input or notconst test = document.createElement("input");try {  test.type = "month";} catch (e) {  console.log(e.description);}// If it does, run the code inside the if () {} blockif (test.type === "text") {  // Hide the native picker and show the fallback  nativePicker.style.display = "none";  fallbackPicker.style.display = "block";  fallbackLabel.style.display = "block";  // Populate the years dynamically  // (the months are always the same, therefore hardcoded)  populateYears();}function populateYears() {  // Get the current year as a number  const date = new Date();  const year = date.getFullYear();  // Make this year, and the 100 years before it available in the year <select>  for (let i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {    const option = document.createElement("option");    option.textContent = year - i;    yearSelect.appendChild(option);  }}

• The generic<input> element and the interface used to manipulate it,HTMLInputElement
• Date and time formats used in HTML
• Date and Time picker tutorial
• <input type="datetime-local">,<input type="date">,<input type="time">, and<input type="week">