If you need slightly less control over formatting than the currently accepted answer, Date#toLocaleDateString can be used to create standard locale-specific renderings. The locale and options arguments let applications specify the language whose formatting conventions should be used, and allow some customization of the rendering.

Options key examples:

1. day:
   The representation of the day.
   Possible values are "numeric", "2-digit".
2. weekday:
   The representation of the weekday.
   Possible values are "narrow", "short", "long".
3. year:
   The representation of the year.
   Possible values are "numeric", "2-digit".
4. month:
   The representation of the month.
   Possible values are "numeric", "2-digit", "narrow", "short", "long".
5. hour:
   The representation of the hour.
   Possible values are "numeric", "2-digit".
6. minute: The representation of the minute.
   Possible values are "numeric", "2-digit".
7. second:
   The representation of the second.
   Possible values are "numeric", 2-digit".

All these keys are optional. You can change the number of options values based on your requirements, and this will also reflect the presence of each date time term.

Note: If you would only like to configure the content options, but still use the current locale, passing null for the first parameter will cause an error. Use undefined instead.

For different languages:

1. "en-US": For English
2. "hi-IN": For Hindi
3. "ja-JP": For Japanese

You can use more language options.

For example

var options = { weekday: 'long', year: 'numeric', month: 'long', day: 'numeric' };
var today  = new Date();

console.log(today.toLocaleDateString("en-US")); // 9/17/2016
console.log(today.toLocaleDateString("en-US", options)); // Saturday, September 17, 2016
console.log(today.toLocaleDateString("hi-IN", options)); // शनिवार, 17 सितंबर 2016

You can also use the toLocaleString() method for the same purpose. The only difference is this function provides the time when you don't pass any options.

// Example
9/17/2016, 1:21:34 PM

References:

• toLocaleString()

• toLocaleDateString()

If you need to quickly format your date using plain JavaScript, use getDate, getMonth + 1, getFullYear, getHours and getMinutes:

var d = new Date();

var datestring = d.getDate()  + "-" + (d.getMonth()+1) + "-" + d.getFullYear() + " " +
d.getHours() + ":" + d.getMinutes();

// 16-5-2015 9:50

Or, if you need it to be padded with zeros:

var datestring = ("0" + d.getDate()).slice(-2) + "-" + ("0"+(d.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2) + "-" +
    d.getFullYear() + " " + ("0" + d.getHours()).slice(-2) + ":" + ("0" + d.getMinutes()).slice(-2);

// 16-05-2015 09:50

Use the date.format library:

var dateFormat = require('dateformat');
var now = new Date();
dateFormat(now, "dddd, mmmm dS, yyyy, h:MM:ss TT");

returns:

Saturday, June 9th, 2007, 5:46:21 PM 

dateformat on npm

Well, what I wanted was to convert today's date to a MySQL friendly date string like 2012-06-23, and to use that string as a parameter in one of my queries. The simple solution I've found is this:

var today = new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10);

Keep in mind that the above solution does not take into account your timezone offset.

You might consider using this function instead:

function toJSONLocal (date) {
    var local = new Date(date);
    local.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() - date.getTimezoneOffset());
    return local.toJSON().slice(0, 10);
}

This will give you the correct date in case you are executing this code around the start/end of the day.

var date = new Date();

function toLocal(date) {
  var local = new Date(date);
  local.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() - date.getTimezoneOffset());
  return local.toJSON();
}

function toJSONLocal(date) {
  var local = new Date(date);
  local.setMinutes(date.getMinutes() - date.getTimezoneOffset());
  return local.toJSON().slice(0, 10);
}

// check out your devtools console
console.log(date.toJSON());
console.log(date.toISOString());
console.log(toLocal(date));

console.log(toJSONLocal(date));

• Date.toISOString
• Date.toJSON
• String.slice
• External example

Custom formatting function:

For fixed formats, a simple function make the job. The following example generates the international format YYYY-MM-DD:

function dateToYMD(date) {
    var d = date.getDate();
    var m = date.getMonth() + 1; //Month from 0 to 11
    var y = date.getFullYear();
    return '' + y + '-' + (m<=9 ? '0' + m : m) + '-' + (d <= 9 ? '0' + d : d);
}

console.log(dateToYMD(new Date(2017,10,5))); // Nov 5

The OP format may be generated like:

function dateToYMD(date) {
    var strArray=['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'];
    var d = date.getDate();
    var m = strArray[date.getMonth()];
    var y = date.getFullYear();
    return '' + (d <= 9 ? '0' + d : d) + '-' + m + '-' + y;
}
console.log(dateToYMD(new Date(2017,10,5))); // Nov 5

Note: It is, however, usually not a good idea to extend the JavaScript standard libraries (e.g. by adding this function to the prototype of Date).

A more advanced function could generate configurable output based on a format parameter.

If to write a formatting function is too long, there are plenty of libraries around which does it. Some other answers already enumerate them. But increasing dependencies also has it counter-part.