replace dateformat with a faster implementation

[Uzlopak]

Regarding dateformat being esm and also in regards of older PRs like #235 or felixge/node-dateformat#169 :

I refactored dateformat and more importantly implemented a DateFormatter class.

You can see the result here: felixge/node-dateformat#187

I also tested my DateFormatter class against the dateformat test suite. It passes.

My implementation of DateFormatter is by a magnitude faster than dateformat. See the benchmarks in the PR against the dateformat repository.

We could integrate DateFormater into pino-pretty or create a @pino/date-formatter package.

I dont see any reason, why we should stick with the dateformat package.

@mcollina
@jsumners

[mcollina]

I would prefer that to be a separate module. We can call it pinojs/dateformat.

https://github.com/pinojs/dateformat

[jsumners]

The dateformat module was chosen for its simple format string format and list of pre-defined format strings. It provides an easier UX than a full date library like Luxon. It also doesn't bring along any transitive dependencies. I am okay with a replacement as long as it continues to meet these requirements.

[Uzlopak]

I created a initial branch on https://github.com/pinojs/dateformat

As you can see, it has 0 deps. Also it has a dateformat "wrapper" for DateFormatter.

[movy]

I hope my comment is related.
Recently, a nanosecond precision support landed in pino: pinojs/pino#2251

It was a very welcome update for my usecase, yet I still haven't figured whether it is possible to pass pino.stdTimeFunctions.isoTimeNano timestamp to pino-pretty... Is it possible or considered to be implemented soon?

[mahmoodhamdi]

Good progress here — the pinojs/dateformat repo already exists with @Uzlopak's initial branch. A zero-dependency DateFormatter class that passes the original dateformat test suite sounds like the right approach.

For anyone looking to help, the remaining work seems to be:

1. Finalize the DateFormatter class in pinojs/dateformat
2. Add nanosecond precision support (following up on feat: added timestamp rfc3339 format with nanoseconds pino#2251)
3. Update pino-pretty to use the new module instead of dateformat

The ESM-only move by the original dateformat package is a pain point for many CJS-based pino transports, so this would be a solid quality-of-life improvement.

[jsumners]

@mahmoodhamdi please stop adding useless "summary" posts. We are quite tired of the spam across the whole organization.